


to which fate binds you

by Katbelle



Series: to make a happy life [4]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Backstory, Best Friends, Board Games, Drinking, Drinking & Talking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Drama, Family Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Graduation, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Late Night Conversations
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 13:28:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 37,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5541746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katbelle/pseuds/Katbelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This time: Matt and Foggy go home for Foggy's baby sister's high school graduation, Foggy turns out to be in the possession of skills previously unknown to Matt, the Nelsons are a crazy bunch, the woman of Foggy's dreams makes an appearance, Jess gets more work, Jess and Foggy uncover what might be a conspiracy, and Foggy's annoying upstairs neighbour turns Foggy's life upside down. And, throughout it all, there's some great food.</p><p>
  <em>"What's so difficult about love, anyway?" Foggy muses on the verge of sleep. "It's just work, and that's just force, applied over a distance. It isn't difficult at all."</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. whatever happens

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been written for [this prompt](http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/4501.html?thread=7787157#cmt7787157) on the kinkmeme. I swear it was, even if it takes about 40k words to get to the part of the fic that fills it. I hope you'll stick with me till the end!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Whatever happens at all happens as it should; you will find this true, if you watch narrowly._

**to which fate binds you**

_Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart._  
Marcus Aurelius

***

Foggy wakes up with Matt safe, here, and so close.

It's a good thing he's mostly pinned to his coach by Matt's dead — sleeping dead, not _dead_ dead, that's a possibility he doesn't even want to think about ever — weight, otherwise he would have leapt off of it, shoving Matt off and to the ground, and this time he wouldn't have had the excuse of being shocked by the worst truth bomb of his life.

Fuck, he needs to stop making That Night a point of reference for anything.

As it is, he can't move even if he wanted to. Matt's still asleep, his body savouring what most likely is the first proper night of sleep in months, and Foggy's not going to wake him up. He's not going to make him move — and he could, he has one hand free, after all — and _he_ is not going to move either. He's going to stay where he is and he's going to let Matt sleep, God knows that idiot needs it more than Foggy needs to be able to use his legs in the morning. It's fine. Worst case scenario, they'll just call Karen and tell her not to bother coming to the office. They'll take a day off. They probably should take a day off.

Foggy should definitely take a day off.

Matt moves in his sleep, somehow managing to even further tangle his legs with Foggy's, and tugs at Foggy's T-shirt. Oh yes, he's still clutching onto it, as if it was a lifeline, his fist clenched around the fabric. It can't be comfortable, Foggy reasons, he'll have creaks in his fingers assuming he'll be able to unbend them at all. The fingers of Foggy's free hand skim the back of Matt's fist, dip down, and Foggy tries to work them between Matt's curled fingers and his palm. His ring finger slips in and for a second Foggy's reminded of the time he held his cousin Jared's daughter for the first time. She fell asleep holding onto his finger. It's a silly thought; Matt and a two-week-old baby are hardly the same, after all. But the trust, the level of trust it takes to feel safe enough to fall asleep next to another person? A two-week-old baby wouldn't know any better. With Matt, it feels like a privilege.

Foggy's thumb brushes across Matt's knuckles, left and right and back, coaxing Matt to relax his grip on Foggy's T-shirt enough for Foggy to slip his middle finger and pinky in as well. Slowly, carefully he unbends Matt's fingers, smoothes them out on his chest. There. At least he won't have to pop his joints when he wakes.

Foggy moves his hand to get his hair out of his eyes when Matt makes a low distressed noise and grabs Foggy's fingers, digging his nails into Foggy's skin in the process. Which, ouch, they're way too sharp.

"Okay," Foggy breathes. Okay, yeah. His thumb picks up the gentling motion left-right over the back of Matt's hand. Okay. This is totally cool, holding hands while sleeping. He can totally do that, it wouldn't even be the weirdest thing he's ever done. Talk about all those times in law school when Matt had a nightmare bad enough that it woke Foggy up. Or maybe don't, let's not talk about that, Foggy now knows enough of Matt's secrets, there's no need to embarrass Matt by making him realise there's _more_.

"I'm not going anywhere," he says quietly. He's not. Between most of Matt sprawled across his torso and not feeling his legs due to the rest of Matt happily crashing there, he's most definitely not going anywhere. And now he can't even move his hand, the one part of him that wasn't previously pinned and claimed as Matt's.

Though, to be honest, he's been Matt's long before this, hasn't he? This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'sell your soul to the devil'. Foggy has, years ago. It's a good thing his devil's such a swell guy.

He wonders what time it is. It was just past nine o'clock when Matt fell asleep on him last night and Foggy soon followed suit, because sleeping sounded like a much better alternative than staying awake and thinking. It's not night anymore, that much he can tell, because it's bright-ish outside, but considering that he never gets the sun on his side of the building — that's Jess side alright, no wonder she has all those heavy curtains in her apartment — that doesn't tell him anything. It's summer already, bright-ish in this case means any time starting from around 5:30 am. He tries to listen to the people outside. He may not have Matt's crazy abilities — it's interesting, though, how far does Matt's spectacular hearing extend? something to ask about at a later date — but he knows his neighbourhood and he knows the people here. If he hears high-pitched screaming? It means it's close to 7:30 am and Mrs. Steele is opening her shop and yelling at her son to help her. Garbage truck passing by means 8 am, which also means Foggy is terribly late. Loud, but growly barking just outside his building? It's Lori from downstairs taking her Great Dane on his 4 am nightly walk the moment she gets home from work. The sound of drilling or of the hammer being used repeatedly meant 5 am up until a week ago, when Foggy, Jess, Malcolm, and Mr. Graham ganged up and threatened to file a complaint against Marc from upstairs, a threat that was successful mostly due to Jess having people at the precinct, Mr. Graham being a retired city worker, Malcolm having the air of a person you wanted to listen to, and Foggy throwing in enough legal jargon to scare Marc shitless.

Now the drilling starts at 7 am sharp, the moment city's quiet hours end. God bless you at least for that much common courtesy, Marc.

It's probably around 6 am, then. Not enough time to go back to sleep — assuming they don't take the day off, after all — but still not late enough to consider getting up absolutely necessary. He will have to get up and make breakfast, though, at some point in the nearest future. Matt's too thin. He's always been of a lean built — what, Foggy has _eyes_ , it's kind of difficult not to notice those things when you live with the guy for three years straight and happen to see him shirtless quite a lot — but he's lost weight lately. And not in a good way, he's starting to look borderline unhealthy. The way he did when Foggy first met him, under those ridiculous oversized ugly sweaters. He doesn't eat enough, is the point.

Didn't get to eat anything at the party the day before and then didn't get to eat the pancakes Foggy made for him, because those were left at his place.

As were his glasses, hopefully. He didn't have them when Foggy dragged him off of his fire escape. It'd be a shame if Matt lost them somewhere, he liked that pair. Foggy's dad got them for Matt as a present once, just before they started working for L&Z. Out of them all, Foggy's dad's taste aligned most with Matt's. It was bizarre, that's what it was.

Good thing dad wasn't at Grams' when all the shit went down, Foggy decides. Dad is... Dad is a great, kind guy, a person so outlandishly _nice_ that it seemed weird sometimes. He didn't deserve to see his mother-in-law kicking his adopted son out, or his own son punching a blind elderly man square in the face. He wouldn't have been disappointed, even. He would get _angry_ , and rightly so, and that scared Foggy more than anything. His father never got angry. A temper? Mum had a temper. Candace had a temper, hell, _he_ himself had issues. Dad? Dad was _sweet_ , sweet and kind and the exact opposite of Ray, which might be the reason why Mum and Grams loved him so.

Dad always tried to see the best in people. He's spent years of his life telling first his wife and then his kids to maybe give Ray a chance, how about that. Every single visit that didn't end with Anna chasing her father with a shotgun — Foggy can count them out and he'd still have fingers to spare — happened because Edward Nelson grit his teeth and was the better man. Dad doesn't deserve this clusterfuck of a situation. Such faith and idealism ought to be protected.

Heh. Faith and idealism. No wonder Matt used to remind Foggy of his dad, once upon a time. 

Foggy sighs. He shifts on the couch, displacing Matt a bit and freeing his other hand from under Matt's too light weight. Arm. Freeing his arm, which has been sandwiched between Foggy's side and the backrest of the couch and which Matt's unconsciously decided to crash. Ouch. Ouch, oh, God, he'll never be able to use his fingers again. _And_ it's his right arm, his right hand, the fingers of which he broke quite recently punching his wall. Double win.

He stretches the arm above his head, and Matt sighs in sleep, scoops even closer, curling on himself to appear smaller. Which is a tactic, Foggy knows, hello those useful semesters of psychology in undergrad. He's not going to think about whose fault this most likely is, because if he does...

Well, there he goes.

He thinks he kept cool, last night. Didn't seem like a person on the verge of completely losing it. That wouldn't have helped anyone, least of all Matt, who's just seen his--his--seen _Stick_ for the first time in almost twenty years and then been accused of spying and been kicked out by people who were supposed to be his family. Matt needed help and support. Foggy can deal. Foggy will deal, it's not like it changes much, right? Ray has always been a disappointing shitbag, 'evil' has never been far from that and look, he totally is. Evil miserable goddamn motherfucking bastard.

To whom Foggy's _related_ , actually and for real _related_ , as in blood, DNA and the whole she-bang. Matt might not be able to see it, but Foggy is and Foggy has Ray's fucking cheekbones on top of eerily similar facial expressions. Jesus Christ, that's like a prime material for at least a decade in therapy, something Foggy can't afford and can't even consider, not with the gazillion things he wouldn't be able to talk about. It's all like a bad horror fever dream of a soap opera showrunner. There's no way shit like this happens in real life. Let's be real, what are the odds? What were the odds of Matt and Foggy, Matt and Foggy specifically, out of all people, meeting and becoming roommates and then becoming best friends and then--

Unless that asshole planned it.

Foggy lets out a laugh. Yeah, no. He hasn't taken an interest in Matt ever since he abandoned him when it was still the 20th century, and Foggy didn't want anything to do with him, a point he's made quite clear when he was fourteen. So no, unlikely. Ray'd never do that for Matt, and as for Foggy... Maybe, but that would mean that he considered Foggy befriending Matt a positive outcome and Ray's made it clear the day before that he didn't want Matt anywhere near Foggy. Or Foggy anywhere near Matt.

Fuck Ray, seriously.

Why does this bother him so much, though? Ray's never been an actual part of the family, no matter what five-year-old Foggy thought. Disappointment and anger were the only things that one could expect from Ray. This? This is actually _tame_ when compared to what Foggy and Candace both thought at some point or another in their lives Ray did and was (notable examples include a serial killer — which might be kind of true, if Jess' intel is to be believed — a demon and a cannibal).

But it's _Matt_.

That's the heart of the problem, because Matt's the heart of him. Foggy can and will deal, because his opinion of Ray could not get any worse even if he committed genocide right now. But Matt. Matt has conflicted feelings on Ray and his opinion is leaning more towards 'he helped me' rather than 'he abused me', which is probably the unhealthiest thing Foggy's ever heard from him. Conflicting feelings about Ray aside, Foggy and his family, on the other hand, were firmly in the 'good things' category and now it wasn't so simple, because he was Foggy's family too, if in name only, and now his evil bastard ways would reflect on everyone else. And Grams didn't help, and Matt now had all the reason to be wary of them, and all the reason to decide that he couldn't look at Foggy the same way anymore. 

It's _Matt_. Matt, who's currently sleeping on top of Foggy, with his head curled on Foggy's chest under his chin and his right hand crushing the fingers of Foggy's left. Trust. It all circles back to trust and Matt trusting Foggy to be his best friend and not to spontaneously develop homicidal tendencies.

Foggy wraps his arm around Matt and his hands finds its way into Matt's hair. Utterly ridiculous. Thick and brownish-auburn, always curling at the ends when too long or too wet. Matt fell asleep with his hair wet the night before and that nightmare curled overnight, of course, so now Foggy's fingers comb through strands that look much more unruly than before.

That's the exact moment Marc upstairs starts drilling a hole into his wall, or his something anyway. So it was closer to seven o'clock after all.

Matt makes a soft pained noise. He lets go of Foggy's hand, turns his head, buries it further in Foggy's tee and covers his one visible ear, as if in an attempt to block out the sound. Foggy will strangle Marc, who the hell renovates their apartment for almost four months straight, God, if you have the money to do that, hire a specialist instead of doing everything yourself and torturing your neighbours for a little less than half a year.

"Hey," Foggy says, fingers never once stopping. "Did you know that your hair's red at the right angle and in the right light?"

"You calling me a redhead?" Matt asks. At least that's what Foggy thinks he means, most of the sentence is murmured into the fabric of Foggy's tee and sounds a bit like 'youc'leenmrehe'.

"Thank God it's not carrot orange, Murdock, otherwise you'd be the least inconspicuous person ever."

Matt huffs out a laugh and settles more comfortably against Foggy. Foggy sees the moment he fully wakes up, because he notices him frown. "Are you--petting me?"

"I think the term you're looking for is 'finger-combing your hair', for which you'll thank me later, because I'm making this disaster that you wear on your head look less felted."

"Thank you," Matt says. "What time is it?"

"Can't reach my phone as your abs sprawled all across me have prevented me from moving far, but judging by the fact that Marc's at it again I'd say it's just after seven o'clock."

"In the morning?"

Foggy rolls his eyes, but refrains from commenting. It's not like it'd be the first time Matt went so long without proper sleep that he just crashed one evening only to wake up the next. Evening, that is. Add to that emotional exhaustion of the previous day...? Yeah, Foggy wouldn't have been surprised to have Matt sleep straight through the day.

"In the morning," he confirms. "If you let me up I'll make you breakfast and we'll decide if we want to go into the office today or not."

Matt scrambles to get off Foggy and sit up on the couch, which is proving to be difficult, since apparently neither his nor Foggy's legs are working properly. "We have to. Amanda Sallis is coming in at nine o'clock, remember?"

The civil lawsuit they're handling. The thrice damned Sallis case that seemed so straightforward when they took it and then developed into this mess that dragged them into the middle of some six other pending cases. See, that's why Foggy hates civil law, you never know what you are getting yourself into. Criminal cases were easy, someone was accused of a triple homicide and they were either found guilty or not. Civil proceedings? _Please._ "Damn," Foggy curses, "I forgot."

"Mhm," Matt hums. "That's why we need to go to the office, we can't _not_ show up for that meeting. What would that say about our work ethics."

"Probably nothing worse than that piece of cardboard with our names on it that's taped to the front door is already saying," Foggy says. He stretches his legs and cranes his neck, ouch, fuck, he was getting too old for sleeping on couches. He'll be hitting thirty in a few months, after all. Matt could sleep on the couch, being younger and all, but Foggy? Nah. Growing old with dignity _et cetera_.

Matt frowns. "But Karen said she took care of that," he says with a shade of hurt in his voice, as if Karen's wronged him personally. Foggy chuckles, because while Karen didn't lie _exactly_ , Matt's idea of 'taking care of it' was probably different from what Karen actually did. "Foggy, what did she do?"

"She bought cute sparkly stickers and adorned our cardboard plate with them," Foggy says and delights in how Matt's expression changes from confusion to horror when he realises that Foggy's heart didn't skip on a lie. "She even found avocado ones, you know? Maybe we should let her in on our inside joke."

"It's an inside joke _because_ it's something only the two of us know about. That's kind of the definition."

"It could be more of an anecdote, though, you know." Foggy stands up. He sways a little, because the legs are still not working at 100% capacity, but they're getting there. He won't trip on his way to the kitchenette, at least. "Something to laugh about as a group."

"I like having something that only the two of us know about."

"Something other than your horned alter ego, you mean?" Matt cringes. "What! It was just a friendly jab, come on."

"No, it's... Your joints creaked."

Foggy gapes at him. "You heard that?" Matt nods. "No way. You heard my joints creak?"

"Like nails on a blackboard," Matt says, smiling sheepishly. "So? About that breakfast?"

Foggy shakes his head fondly as he pads to the kitchenette. "You're high-maintenance, Murdock. Pancakes, how about pancakes? I promised you pancakes yesterday."

"Pancakes sound lovely." Matt gets up as well, stretches, runs a hand through his already disheveled hair. "I'll have to go to my place, get some clothes."

"Your shirt and jeans should be dry by now," Foggy says, opening the fridge. He dives in and emerges with a bottle of milk and a carton of eggs. Flour, he needs flour too. He deposits the eggs and the milk on the kitchen counter and squats to rummage through one of the undercounter cupboards in search of the flour. Ah, there it is. He barely manages to avoid hitting his head when he emerges, but succeeds in finding the flour and even an unopened jar of Grams' homemade raspberry jam. Matt's not a big fan of raspberry, but will pick it when faced with Nutella as the alternative.

Or he'll just eat Foggy's pancakes sans any topping like the loser he really is.

It does flatter Foggy, though, the fact that Matt enjoys his cooking. Okay, 'cooking' is putting it in very generous terms, Foggy takes after his mother and is in general a disaster in the kitchen; from the two of them it's Matt that's the better cook, not that he shared that info when they lived together and Foggy had the chance to benefit from it. He did cook from time to time, but nothing overly fancy, nothing like the fancy things Foggy now knows Matt can do, you lying liar. For some reason Matt thought that mad kitchen skills were suspicious and not something a Regular Blind Guy possessed. Which, for fuck's sake, Matt, we live in the post-Christine Ha world, after all.

"They're jeans and a shirt, Foggy," Matt says. "Not precisely the attire a respectful attorney should sport."

Foggy measures the amount of flour needed. He grabs a bowl, pours the milk inside, adds the flour and cracks three eggs. Where the hell is his blender? "Russell Zack would disagree with you."

Matt laughs from behind the bathroom door. It's been a running joke at L&Z, all through their internship. Parish Landman, always impeccably dressed in his Hugo Boss three-piece suits and sporting ties in ridiculous colours like bright red or neon green, and with matching shoes. The senior associates who were tasked with overseeing the interns, who tried so hard to at least dress as if they earned more than they actually did. The junior associates and the interns in their cheap suits, that wasn't at all unusual for a bigtime firm like L&Z. 

But then there was Russell Zack, who — as the local legend had it — didn't own a single suit, who came to work wearing jeans and button-up checked shirts, with or without his solitary black tie. And flip-flops, that one summer, when the air conditioning in the offices was broken for a week.

Russell Zack came to work looking like he had run out of fucks to give and he was _still_ a damn good lawyer. Matt would survive in his white dress shirt and dark blue jeans. "You'll borrow one of my ties and you'll be fine!" he yells, hoping that Matt can hear him over the water running under the shower.

Oh, he probably can. Can he? He can, right? Damn, he should ask. Not only because he's curious, also because it's a thing he should now and that might be important and relevant at some later time.

The pancakes are ready by the time Matt emerges from the bathroom, sweatpants back on, hair wet and dripping onto a too big T-shirt. One of Foggy's, he must have dug it out from the pile of clean clothes to iron that Foggy would never actually iron and would just throw into the drawers of his wardrobe.

Foggy gestures at his tiny table. "Pancakes," he says. Even without spectacular senses he can hear Matt's stomach grumble. "Nutella or raspberry jam if you want to go sweet, cheese and mushrooms if sour. Coffee will take a moment."

Matt takes a seat and reaches for raspberry jam. Foggy shakes his head and slides a pancake onto Matt's plate; at Matt's questioning tilt of head he shakes his head again. What's he supposed to say? 'It's cute that you do exactly as I think you would'?

Yeah, no.

The kettle chirps and Foggy moves to make coffee. It's important they drink some here, at home, otherwise they'll get stuck drinking Karen's abomination that laid next to actual coffee once, maybe, in an alternative universe. He should stop drinking that. He should switch to tea, more caffeine plus he doubts Karen's skills extend to ruining tea as well. If they do, he'll just pour enough lemon juice in to make it drinkable again.

"--jacket," he catches Matt saying.

"Mhm?"

"I said that you could give me one of your jackets too," Matt repeats. "To go with the tie. Since it might be too late for me to go to my place and change. We still have to go over our countersuit once again at the office."

"It'll be too big for you." Matt shrugs. "You can take the gray one, it'll go well with the duck tie."

"The what?"

"Duck tie," Foggy says, and for once Matt's inability to see facial expressions comes in handy, because he does seem to think that Foggy's serious. "The one I got from Marci one Christmas? Dark blue one, with embroidered ducks on it."

Matt gapes. It's kind of adorable. "I'm not wearing a duck tie. It's bad enough I'll be wearing _jeans_."

"Hey, if they're good enough for an important Nelson family dinner, they're good enough for a client meeting. And don't worry, Amanda Sallis will be very grateful you went with them."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Foggy sighs and adds sugar to the coffee. "Nothing," he says as he stirs the coffee. He picks up the mug and hands it to Matt, "handle on the left."

Matt smiles. "I know," he says. Of course he knows. Of course. Was that condescending, telling him that? Should he stop telling him those things when it's just the two of them? Maybe he should. "Thank you for telling me anyway."

Foggy clears his throat. "So. Anyway. Do you have your glasses?"

Matt frowns and puts the mug down. Frowns harder. "I'm not sure what happened to them. I don't--remember much, from yesterday. It's a bit of a blur."

No wonder. "Maybe you left them at home," Foggy offers. Matt didn't leave them at home. If he did, Foggy would have noticed them during those hours he spent there waiting for Matt. "Until we get them back, you can borrow my shades."

"Thank you," Matt says. Foggy kind of shrugs with one arm, because it's nothing, he'll do what he can to help. Matt would do the same for him — well, maybe not the clothes, Matt's clothes would never fit Foggy — so it's not a big deal. Plus, they usually open at eight o'clock sharp, if they want to get to the office on time _and_ review the countersuit before Amanda Sallis arrives, they'll have to head straight to the office, no detours at Matt's. They'd never make it in time otherwise.

Well, Matt would if he parkoured across rooftops, but Foggy has enough faith in Matt's common sense to believe that he wouldn't do something that dumb in jeans and a shirt and also in broad daylight.

Please let Matt be reasonable enough.

"It's okay," Foggy tells him. It's okay. It's really nothing.

"No." Matt shakes his head and grabs Foggy's wrist, squeezes once, hard. " _Thank you_."

***

"Are we having a casual Monday?" Karen asks when they finally enter the office at quarter past eight. "And no one told me? Guys, come on, the heels are killing me."

"You can wear flats if you want, Karen, we don't care," Foggy tells her as he heads into his office to search his pile of documents for the Sallis file. They need more filing cabinets. They need real filing cabinets, stat, before they drown in their own paperwork.

"We overslept," Matt explains laconically in a way that explains exactly nothing. How does he do that? Give a crap half-assed explanation and have everyone fall for it? It must be his face. His sad wounded duck face that made people want to believe him. At least until he opens his mouth and lies so terribly that it ruins the whole thing.

Or maybe that's an act? Him being a terrible liar? That's what great liars want you to think, isn't it, that they're bad liars when in reality they're not. That was one tactic. The other one was being such a good liar that you didn't even have to pretend to be a bad one as no one even entertained the notion that you could be lying.

Foggy, for example, is an excellent liar.

"I like your new glasses," Karen comments. Matt's hand immediately flies to adjust the temple. "I wouldn't have said this was your colour, but it looks surprisingly good on you."

Foggy bites down on his fist to hide his laughter. Through his room's window he sees Matt frown — Foggy's Ray-Bans slide down his nose a little bit. "Wait. What colour are they? Foggy said they were black."

"They're black on the front, that much is true," Karen confirms, "but the temples are pink. Bright pink. Very, very bright pink, highlighter pink almost."

"Pink," Matt repeats flatly.

"They look good on you," Karen reassures him.

" _Pink._ "

"Is this one of your weird in-pranks that I don't get?" she asks Foggy, who laughs out loud, because Matt's disgusted and offended face is a sight to behold. Someone who doesn't know him well wouldn't realise that, but Matt does lead with his face. 

_I hate you_ , Matt mouths at him behind Karen's back. Foggy wipes a happy tear off his face. "Matt couldn't find his glasses and those were the only pair that I had at home," he explains.

"You could have told me," Matt huffs. He tugs at the glasses, but doesn't take them off.

"I didn't have a different pair, Matt."

Matt stops tugging. His shoulders sag when he realises what Foggy is not telling: it was either Foggy's pink Ray-Bans or no glasses at all, and the latter was not an option. Matt knows that, Foggy knows that, Matt knows that Foggy knows. Foggy isn't sure what Matt's issue is — though he strongly suspects it's got something to do with some asshole saying something cruel to Matt at some point — but he knows that there _is_ an issue. Matt doesn't go out without his glasses. Matt doesn't like to be seen without his glasses. It takes a lot of time for him to warm up to a person enough to even consider taking them off. For the first month that they've spent as roommates, Matt took his glasses off only after he's got into bed and the lights were off. Foggy noticed that. The same way he noticed Matt always quickly reaching for his glasses and putting them on whenever Karen entered the room. Of course he noticed, he wasn't _blind_.

Alright, bad choice of wording.

The point stands, though.

It was either pink Ray-Bans or no glasses. So what if he told Matt they were black — he didn't even lie, not exactly, they were partially black. Maybe he didn't want Matt to feel silly. Self-conscious. 

Or something.

"Zack's glasses were pink," he reminds Matt, "and he still went on to earn millions. Think about that. Maybe there's a correlation between those two facts, mhm? Who can tell."

The corner of Matt's mouth twitches. He pushes the bridge of the glasses up his nose and smiles. "Pink, you say?"

" _Hello Kitty_ mind-numbing pink. I think his daughter picked them for him."

Matt sighs. "Alright," he says. "Alright."

***

Amanda Sallis is very grateful that Counselor Murdock wore tight jeans to work today and eyes Matt's ass every moment she feels like she can get away with it. She also compliments Matt on the bold choice of frames and tells him that the pink goes well with his hair colour.

Matt blushes and Foggy gets the perfect chance to practice his eye-rolling skills.

_For real._

***

"How about Mr. Kita?" Foggy asks, flipping through the pages (and pages and pages _and pages_ ) of Amanda Sallis' employment history. The case they were actually hired for was a lawsuit against the company that was her last employer, and Sallis was suing them for unpaid wages. What she neglected to mention, however, was a string of five — five! — related cases that she had pending. It was a civil law nightmare and when it came to light that dabbling in her case meant dabbling in _all_ her cases, Matt and Foggy seriously considered firing her.

For about four minutes in total.

They were idiots and compassionate people, at heart, and Amanda Sallis was just on the wrong side of sixty, had no real prospects, and on top of that has been dropped by four of her previous counsels. _Four_ lawyers dropped her, a fact that was the winning factor in their decision to take her case after all. Sure, it was complicated as hell. And yes, it was going to drag for months, because all of the six Sallis cases were interconnected and Foggy was sure that at some point some judge in one of them was going to say that they need to wait for a judgment in another one to make their own decision. It was bound to happen, so the Sallis cases were a long-term commitment.

They were also the right thing to do, the fact that they didn't — contrary to what Marci thought — have commitment issues was an asset then.

"Mr. Kita?" Matt asks, rummaging through his own stack of Braille documents. He makes a satisfied noise when he finds the sheet he was looking for and he quickly skims through the text. "Ms. Sallis' preantepenultimate employer? You're thinking a character witness?"

"She did work for him for almost six years and states that he never once complained," Foggy explains. "Might be useful in asserting her as an honest and dedicated employee. Also, who on earth uses words like 'preantepenultimate'?"

"Fourth-to-last," Matt says with a smirk. "'Pre' means 'before' and..."

"And so does 'ante', 'pen' comes from 'paene' which means 'almost', yes, Mr. Merriam-Webster, I aced Latin at school, I _know_. Can you hear me roll my eyes at you, _very hard_? Is that a sound?"

Matt shakes his head. "It's not a sound and it's not something I can see."

"So I'll just have to keep telling you when I roll my eyes at you. Or I won't, since that's pretty much the default setting."

Matt laughs at that and reaches for the bowl of grapes that Foggy put on his coffee table, takes it and places on the couch next to him. Which is fine, Foggy isn't that fond of grapes anyway, he buys them almost exclusively for Matt. Foggy himself likes his grapes a little more fermented and in a corked bottle. Like wine. He likes wine, okay. But it still counts as grapes, right, if ketchup can be considered a vegetable, wine can be considered a fruit.

Lawyer logic at work.

"You're vibrating," Matt says à propos of nothing, startling Foggy.

"What?"

Without even as much as tilting his head, Matt points at the bag that Foggy dumped in the hallway the moment they entered his apartment, still buzzing with the excitement and the positive kind of energy you could only get after a round or two at Josie's. Foggy's place, once again proving vastly superior to Matt's, if only in terms of localisation. "Your phone. It's vibrating. Someone's calling you."

"This definitely goes on the list of great uses for super hearing," Foggy says. He puts his papers away and stands up, grumbling under his breath about switching from sound to vibrate for the explicit purpose of not having to hear anyone call and then having a convenient excuse for not answering his phone. It's not like anything extremely bad was going to happen, not when Matt was not out there punching bad guys but rather here, with Foggy, slightly tipsy but not so tipsy as not to be able to work. The best kind of tipsy, when your reasoning skills are still top notch, but suddenly you find this crap funny or interesting, or both.

He crouches by the bag and searches it for his phone and yup, it's vibrating alright. He answers the call without looking at caller id. "Hello?"

"Are you home?" a harsh voice on the other side asks. Foggy lowers the phone and checks the screen. Grams grins at him from the picture. "Franklin?"

"Uh," he says, putting his famous eloquence on display. He hasn't spoken to Grams since Sunday, it's been six days and he'd gladly go another six months without having to talk to her. He glances back, to the living room where Matt is sitting on his couch, suddenly hunched over his papers, with his head hung so low that he looks as if he was reading Braille with his nose. He's overhearing this. Of course he's overhearing this. "Yes?"

"Perfect," Grams says and disconnects. Foggy lowers his phone and blinks at it, and almost jumps out of his skin when someone knocks on his door.

Uh-oh. This is not going to end well.

Foggy throws one last glance at Matt — who's now hunched so bad that he pretty much disappeared, it's like he's trying to merge with the couch to escape scrutiny — before he pushes himself up and opens the door.

"May I come in?" Grams asks politely.

Foggy grimaces, but steps back and lets her in. While springy and fit, Grams _is_ ninety-years-old and she travelled here from Harlem on the off-chance that her grandson might be home. She didn't even check beforehand. Was this a tactic to make him feel guilty if he wasn't home? Was it? Maybe? Who could tell. It's not like he actually _knew_ Grams all that well, apparently.

That was becoming a depressing pattern in his life.

"What do you want?" he asks, and perhaps it sounds colder than necessary. Or maybe not, that's a very appropriate level of coldness. And it's effective, because the corner of Grams' mouth twitches and not in a suppressed smile. Oh yes, Foggy learnt from the best, which in this case happens to be Marci. No one could pull a 'cold and eternally disappointed' tone quite like Marci did.

"To apologise, again," Grams says, "and to give these back." She hands him a slim box. Foggy opens it and finds Matt's glasses inside, cleaned, folded and wrapped in a piece of cloth so that they don't get scratched.

He closes the box. "Thanks."

Grams nods. Then she turns her head towards Foggy's couch and says, raising her voice, "Good evening, Matthew."

"Good evening, Mrs. Connor," the couch replies in Matt's muffled voice.

"You left your glasses in my house," Grams says. "I'm sorry it took me so long to return them."

That lures Matt out. He pushes himself up and half-turns, props his arm on the backrest of the couch and looks in Grams' direction. "Thank you for finding them," he says. "Mrs. Connor, I--"

"Frannie," Grams interrupts Matt. She presses a hand to Foggy's chest and continues, "Frannie, would you be a dear and go make me a cup of tea? I'd like to speak with Matthew."

Foggy tenses. "No."

"Franklin."

" _No._ " Oh hell no. He's not leaving them alone. He knows what happened the last time they were left alone and there will be no repeat of that, and definitely not in his house. He doesn't trust Grams with Matt, not anymore.

The list of people he trusts with Matt is getting shorter and shorter the longer he thinks about it.

"Foggy." Matt smiles wryly. "It's okay."

Grams arches an eyebrow at him and pushes him towards his kitchenette. He glares at her through narrowed eyes, but goes in and puts the kettle on. He watches as Grams walks towards Matt and then sits on the coffee table opposite him. She gestures at him and Foggy can _see_ that she's speaking, but she must be whispering, because Foggy can't hear a thing, God damn that kettle and the cracks of the water boiling. 

Matt pulls his knees up and wraps an arm around them, and he cocks his head. Foggy's not sure if he contributes to the conversation or if the talk is one-sided on Grams' side, but he does listen. And fine, alright, Foggy does kind of wish he had Matt's super spectacular hearing now, because he's _dying_ to know what Grams is telling him. And then he's more than dying, and getting a bit concerned at the same time, because Grams stands up abruptly and moves in even closer. She runs a hand through Matt's hair and Foggy sees her cup Matt's cheek, and then she bends and kisses Matt on the forehead, and presses Matt close in a hug. It's an awkward hug, because Matt is still sitting somewhat hunched on the couch and she's standing and she's _tall_ , but Matt allows it and Grams puts her cheek on the top of Matt's head and rocks gently from side to side.

Which is the moment the kettle whistles and Foggy gets busy with making the tea, and when he looks back to them about sixty seconds later, they're back to their original positions with Matt on the couch and Grams on the coffee table. Even from the kitchenette Foggy can see that Matt's shoulders lost some of the tenseness they had, though.

"Ah!" Grams beams when Foggy brings her her tea. "Thank you, Frannie."

"What was that?" Foggy asks.

"What was what, dear?"

Foggy gestures between Matt and Grams. " _That_."

"Oh, nothing."

"Nothing," Matt concurs. Foggy kindly pretends he doesn't notice him wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt.

Some semblance of peace has been restored then, good to know. Foggy might still be pissed at Grams — and he'll be pissed for quite some time, this kind of anger won't just go away overnight, he is a good-natured Nelson, true, but he's also a Connor and the Connors never let a slight against them go — but Matt doesn't seem to be, and that is what matters. It's okay.

Which is probably why Grams chooses that exact moment to let the other shoe drop. As it has been established prior to tonight, the universe doesn't like Foggy Nelson and enjoys every opportunity to screw with him.

"I was about to tell Matthew that he needs to be careful when he goes out at night," Grams says casually, sipping her tea. "I'm glad that he swapped the black outfit for the red one, but it still doesn't look like it offers enough protection. And you never know with the people in this neighbourhood."

If either of them was holding anything, they'd have dropped it. As it is, Foggy's eyes go wide and Matt just drops his jaw. Grams seems undeterred by that, she hums happily and continues drinking her tea.

"What?" Foggy asks weakly. Matt makes a sound as if he was choking on a hot potato, but doesn't manage to form a single comprehensible word.

"Daredevil," Grams says simply. Points to her for saying that with a straight face and not a single hint of mockery in her tone.

Matt turns to Foggy with a half-wounded, half-accusatory expression on his face. Foggy throws his hands up. "I didn't tell her!"

Grams puts her mug away. "I didn't have to be told anything," she says. "I'm not an idiot, I watch the news. There are only a handful of individuals who know the techniques Daredevil knows and utilises, and I would recognise Raymond's particular fighting style anywhere. It stands to reason that the Devil is a student of his," she finishes, inclining her head towards Matt and looking at him pointedly, for all the good that it does someone who _can't_ sense, let alone _see_ , facial expressions.

"Oh," Matt says.

"Oh," Foggy agrees, because he's got nothing better to say.

"Oh," Grams repeats after them with a smile and a fond shake of her head. "'Oh' indeed. You needn't worry about your secret, I doubt anyone else would be able to put these little clues together. At least no one on the East Coast."

"You won't tell...?" Matt asks, clearly surprised. It's one thing to hope for Foggy's loyalty — and Matt hoped for it, Foggy knows, hoped for it but didn't expect — and entirely another to get it from Foggy's family, apparently. 

Grams shakes her head. "Not my secret to tell." She stands up and brushes nonexistent dust off her jeans, thanks, Grams, for subtly implying that Foggy ought to clean up the place. Grams touches Matt's cheek and gently runs a thumb across it. "I'm sorry," she says, "for everything. And please take care of yourself, I don't want to see you hurt."

Matt nods. Grams twirls a strand of Matt's hair on her finger before pushing it behind Matt's ear; she smiles and takes a step back, inclines her head at Foggy and motions it towards the door, inviting him to follow her. Which he does, reluctantly, because Matt has that perfectly blank expression on which means that he's feeling too much and doesn't know how to deal with it or how to filter through it, and that he doesn't want any of that to show.

"What did you tell him?" he asks quietly once they're by the door.

"What he needed to hear," Grams says, "and what he should have heard a long time ago."

"Anything in particular?"

Grams smiles and pats his cheek. "Nice try. See you soon, Frannie."

She leaves his apartment and Foggy closes the door behind her. With a loud sigh he runs a hand through his hair and down his face. That's not how he imagined this evening to go. 

When he gets back to the living room, Matt has his papers strewn around him again and is reading. "So," he says and lifts his head, gracing Foggy with a bright smile, "about Mr. Kita?"

***

Mr. Kita proves to be a bit of a problem.

"I wanted to--I wanted to _ask_ \-- _Sir_!"

Karen slams the phone down with a groan and rubs her temples. It's her raised voice that lured Foggy out of his office and now he's leaning against the doorframe, observing Karen drum her fingers on her desk, pick the phone back up and dial again.

"Problems?" he asks.

Karen makes a pained face. "I'm trying to schedule a meeting with Mr. Kita, as you asked." Foggy hums approvingly. They did ask that of her, when she came in in the morning, they asked her to find his current number and contact him and get him to come talk to them. There was some sort of a glitch in that last part.

"He doesn't want to come?"

"I didn't manage to invite him yet," Karen says. She taps a finger against the receiver. "I don't think he speaks English?"

"That doesn't sound encouraging," Matt comments, emerging from his office. He crosses his hands over his chest. "We'll need a translator."

"Or maybe not," Foggy murmurs. "Call him again, okay?"

Karen raises her brows dubiously, but does as asked. She dials Mr. Kita's number and then passes Foggy the handset. It takes a minute for the call to go through and Mr. Kita to pick up. "Ohayō gozaimasu," Foggy says when Mr. Kita answers the phone. "Watashi no namae wa Foggy Nelson desu, hōritsu jimusho kara Nelson & Murdock."

He ignores the shocked face that Karen makes and Matt's raised brows, focusing on Mr. Kita instead. "Hai?"

"Watashi wa Ms. Sallis o hanashiautai desu. Watashi wa kanojo no bengoshidesu."

"Amanda-san?"

"Hai."

Foggy snaps his fingers at Karen and gestures at her to give him something to write. With the same disbelieving expression she hands him a pen and pushes a block of post-it notes at him. He puts the handset between his ear and his shoulder and he notes down the possible meeting dates and times and also a few names that Mr. Kita believes Amanda Sallis' lawyers should know about. The sound of him scribbling and his litany of "hai, hai" are the only sounds in the office.

"Hai," he says finally. "Arigatō gozaimasu, Kita-san. Dōmo arigatō gozaimasu."

He puts the handset down, disconnecting the call, takes the post-it and sticks it to the cover of the client calendar that Karen got for them. Karen, who is gaping at him as if she just witnessed him perform some sort of a miracle. Or a black magic ritual. Foggy sighs. " _What_."

"You..." Karen shakes her head. "Wait. _Wait_. You speak Japanese?"

Matt appears equally baffled. That's what you get when you assume that your running joke about Foggy's crap Punjabi skills actually equals Foggy being a foreign languages ignorant. Joke's on you, Murdock. "Yeah," he admits. "Yeah, my," he stops here, hesitates over the word, glances at Matt, "my grandfather speaks Japanese. It impressed me when I was five and didn't know better, so I decided to learn. Anime helped. Greatly."

" _Wow_ ," Karen says and sounds honestly impressed. Like, really? Did they honestly think that Foggy went through life with only his abysmal Punjabi skills? "I didn't know. Did you know?" she asks Matt, who shakes his head. "Wow. That's so cool. Surprising, but cool. What other secrets are you harbouring, Foggy Nelson?"

"There are a lot of things you don't know about me yet," Foggy tells her with a grin and a wink, hoping that humour and treating it like a joke will deflect attention from the fact that it's shockingly true.

Judging by Matt's tilted head — and it's tilted in what Foggy's is beginning to recognise as his I'm-listening-to-things-you-can't hear — Foggy's heart informs him that it's not a lie, and that's not exactly a good thing.

***

Matt manages to hold out for three days. But eventually, one afternoon, he hits pause on his iPod and takes off the headphones, tossing them carelessly on the table. "You can speak Japanese."

"Mhm," Foggy agrees, not bothering to look up from the article he's reading.

They're sitting in Foggy's office, because the location at the corner of the building means a nice view of the Hudson, but also entails a bigger window and a better circulation of air. Simply put, it's always a few degrees colder in Foggy's office than anywhere else in the office, and while it was a pain in the beginning of spring — when the temperatures weren't high to begin with, but were pretty close to freezing in Foggy's office — they're a blessing now, when June rolled around with truly summer weather.

"You can speak Japanese?"

"I dare you to sound _more_ surprised," Foggy murmurs.

It's just the two of them at the office; Karen left early today, having promised Doris Urich that she'd come and have dinner with her. Karen got apologetic when it turned out that, for Doris Urich, 'dinnertime' means around 4 pm, but Matt waved a hand at her and told her to go. After all, they didn't have any scheduled clients for the rest of the day and they could answer the phone themselves, they weren't _that_ incompetent. Yes, it was just one afternoon, for God's sake, Karen, they'll be _fine_.

"But _Japanese_?"

Foggy slams his laptop shut. He links his fingers and rests his chin on them. He rather hopes that his posture is radiating disapproval, because he's getting too annoyed to have to voice that. But he does, because, "Yes, Japanese." He sighs. Unlinks his fingers and rubs the bridge of his nose. What the hell is this conversation, even. "And that's something you should have at least suspected, considering the fact you've frequently listened to me bemoan the state of my finances each time I went on a binge and ordered mangas online."

Matt says nothing, so Foggy feels entitled to continue. "Did you really think that my substandard knowledge of Punjabi was all I had? Do I really look like a person who'd sign up for a language they _don't want to learn_ just to get close to a girl _if_ they didn't already know at least one foreign language?"

"I don't know what--"

"I swear to God, Murdock, if that sentence ends with 'you look like', I won't care that you're blind, I'll break your nose. And I'm _good_ at breaking the noses of blind people, as we have previously established." Matt shrugs, but doesn't finish talking, which probably means he did want to say that. Oh boy, Foggy thinks, running a hand through his hair. "I know that me and Punjabi is a great running joke and has been a source of some awesome situations, but really. _Really_ , Matt. I'm not an idiot. I blew Punjabi because I knew I could afford to."

"You never told me."

"Pot, kettle." Foggy can _hear_ Matt gritting his teeth and throws his hands up in exasperation. "Okay, I didn't. Admittedly, I did think you've figured it out on your own, my bad. But it's not--I didn't think it was such an important piece of information that I should have volunteered it within a week of our meeting. 'Hi, I'm Foggy Nelson, I'm fluent in Japanese'."

"You could have mentioned that at any other point in those five years that we've known each other."

"It's never been relevant," Foggy says, "at least not until now. Now it's very handy, because Mr. Kita doesn't speak English and thanks to my awesome language skills we don't have to shell out on a translator." And then, because he is kind of annoyed, he adds, "I never actively lied to you, Matt. About anything."

Which is not a lie. Not at all.

Technically.

Matt smiles upside down and manages to look so dejected that Foggy feels the need to kick himself. That's not--He didn't mean to make Matt sad, or worse, to make him think that he still held all that lying against him. Foggy didn't. He really, really didn't. Sure, he's still sad about it, at times, and it still hurts that Matt never felt like he could trust Foggy enough not to pretend to be someone he isn't around Foggy, but angry? No. He's not angry. Usually, when Foggy's angry at someone, it simmers just beneath the surface and it's a thing that lasts and lasts until it crystallises into the kind of perfect calm rage. He forgives easily, and never forgets. But Matt? Matt's an exception to that. When Foggy gets mad at Matt, it's a swift and violent affair, and it never lasts. Foggy can get mad at Matt, but is incapable of staying mad at him.

"Okay," Matt says and Foggy thinks he should apologise. "Okay. So. In the interest of full disclosure, how many languages can you speak?"

"Speak?" Matt nods and actually leans forward across the table, interested. "And you mean aside English and Japanese?"

"Obviously."

"I took French in high school," Foggy says, shrugging, "and then stuck with it. It made research for a lot of papers in undergrad easier, what with Europe's fixation on that language, and was a great bonus while I was in Geneva." He extends a finger, counting out. "That's one. Then there's Polish — my Aunt Jagoda, remember her, she's the wife of Uncle William from Chicago, she used to speak Polish all the time to me and my cousin when we were kids, I couldn't help but pick up." He extends a second finger. "I can hold a decent conversation in Russian," a third finger, "and I used to know some very rudimentary Italian, but I'm not sure if that's still the case. It's been a long time since I stopped working at Mr. Luria's restaurant."

He wiggles the four extended fingers to make a point and then promptly drops his hand. Matt's gaping at him with his mouth half-open; it's making Foggy feels self-conscious. "What?" he asks, shrugging. "I led a very boring life as a teenager."

Matt shakes his head. "Well, you're right about one thing," he says, using his most authoritative voice. "We definitely won't have to shell out on a translator in the future."

Foggy grabs the closest sheet of paper and balls it without even looking at its content, and throws it at Matt. Matt catches it mere inches in front of his face, laughing, grinning like he just said the best joke ever.

"Ha ha, you think yourself so funny, Murdock." But Foggy can't help but grin as well. He grabs another piece of paper, balls it up and throws at Matt, and Matt catches this one as well, and he tips his head back and laughs out loud. Foggy laughs too, and then reaches for his pen and throws _that_ at Matt, and this Matt somehow doesn't register and the pen ends up hitting him in the head. "Jesus! Sorry, didn't mean that."

Matt reaches for the pen and throws it back, and it hits Foggy right in the nose. "Yes you did."

"Yes I did."

Matt giggles and reaches back for his papers, which Foggy takes as a subtle hint that they should probably get back to work. He opens his laptop and starts it up when Matt asks, "For when did you schedule the meeting with Mr. Kita?"

"Tuesday in two weeks," Foggy replies, typing in his password.

Matt frowns. "He couldn't make it next Tuesday?"

"He could. We can't."

That confuses Matt visibly more. "Why can't we?"

"We're not in New York next Tuesday." Foggy looks up from the laptop just in time to catch Matt's furrowed brows disappear entirely behind his glasses. "We're gonna be in Princeton, buddy."

"Something's escaping me. Why are we going to Princeton, again?"

"Because that's where my parents live?" Matt tips his head in a gesture that says 'well _obviously_ , but aside from that?'. "We're going to Princeton for the once-in-a-lifetime event that is my baby sister's high school graduation."

"You're going."

"No, _we_ are going." Foggy rolls his eyes. "I'm sorry to break this surprising news to you _again_ , but my parents adopted you into this loser family, so attending this type of happenings is now your sad, sad obligation. Not to mention, Candace simply wants you there. I'm under strict orders to escort you to Princeton come this Sunday."

Matt's nose wrinkles in confusion. Foggy's never been exactly sure how that expression is humanly possible, but it's too cute to be questioned, so he just takes its existence for granted. "Why Sunday?"

"Mum and dad insisted on a family dinner, which we've got to attend. And then on Monday there's that graduation picnic, and on Tuesday the whole graduation shtick. We're going on a three-day-long holiday to Princeton and there's nothing you can do about it."

"You could have said something earlier than _Thursday_. Shouldn't we be looking for a present for your sister?"

"She's been promised a Vespa as a graduation gift a million years ago, so that's covered." He glances at Matt. "I'm looking at you inquiringly right now, because I'm not sure if you wouldn't rather prefer to get her a separate present instead of contributing to the one awesome thing she's getting anyway."

"I'm fine with contributing," Matt assures him immediately. "I don't even know what teenage girls like these days."

"Have you ever known?" That earns Foggy the return of one of his paper balls, right to the head. "Geez, alright. I don't know about teenage girls in general, but Candace is very much into creepy stuff, the weirder, the better. Something about torture? I knew I shouldn't have let her read all that _Death Note_ when she was a kid."

"You know, a scooter is a great gift," Matt says quickly, making Foggy laugh. "We're expected Sunday afternoon or evening?"

"Late afternoon, so we'll have to find the best train connection. Dad will pick us up from Princeton Junction, we won't have to take the shuttle. Thanks, dad."

Matt bites down on his lower lip; he drums the fingers of his right hand on the table. Foggy patiently waits for him to gather his thoughts and speak. "Is," Matt starts and stops. Worries his lip between his teeth some more, making it look even redder than usual. "Is he going to be there? Stick?"

Of course. Foggy resists the urge to hit himself in the forehead, because it's such an obvious question, why didn't he think of it. Why didn't he realise that Matt was going to ask that? Dumb. Admittedly, over the years he has perfected the ability to tune Ray completely out of his life — on good days he even managed to completely forget that Ray exists — but come on. He should have seen this one coming.

" _No_ ," he tells Matt. "Absolutely not. No one wants him there and he knows that. On top of that, I'm not even exactly certain that he knows how old Candace is. He might not be aware of the fact that she's graduating this year." Ray certainly didn't know about Foggy graduating high school way back when in 2003. Or about the college graduation in 2010. Or the law school graduation in 2013. Ray was, in general, really bad with dates, or so Grams claimed.

"He knows."

Or he just _didn't care_. Either was fine with Foggy. It's not like _he_ cared.

"How do you know that?" Foggy asks. "You can't know that."

Matt smiles darkly. "He knows everything."

***

At precisely 3:52 pm on Sunday they board a Northeast Corridor train departing Penn Station and bound for Princeton. Foggy's tried to talk his father into coming all the way to New York and picking them up — because a) they'd get to Princeton faster if he did, and b) while trains are better than the subway, Matt is still not a big fan. But no. And when Foggy asked 'why not', Dad gave him some vague crap excuse that boiled down to 'because of reasons'. Reasons which Dad didn't want to disclose to Foggy. The best they could hope for was for Foggy's dad to sacrifice those precious fifteen minutes of his life to come and pick them up from the Junction. Gee, thanks, Dad.

The plus side is that there aren't a lot of people on the train at this hour. Foggy cranes his neck and glances up and down the aisle. Three rows up, two elderly ladies are gossiping over their knitting. Four rows up a kid with a mohawk so big that its electric blue spikes are the only part of him visible over the chair. Two rows down from them, a young woman with a dog — the chocolate lab lies patiently next to her feet and chews on part of its leash. Four rows down, a man — not older than Foggy or Matt — sits next to his daughter while balancing a sobbing toddler on a knee. Overall there aren't more than ten people in the carriage, and they're all spread evenly across it, which is awesome, because the chances of the relative quiet of the journey being disturbed have diminished.

They might just survive those seventy eight minutes with no problems.

"Who's coming?" Matt asks the moment Foggy settles back in his chair.

Foggy glances to his side. Matt chose the window seat and is sitting with his head turned towards it, bowed slightly, his forehead close to leaning against the glass. As if he was looking out through it. "Everyone is," Foggy says, not taking his eyes off the curve of Matt's neck. "Well, okay, not _everyone_ everyone. Aunt Jade didn't get Tuesday off, and my cousin Jared is somewhere in Australia, I think. But Uncle William and Aunt Jagoda are coming, and I'm fairly certain both Bill and Elyse will be there too. There is a distinct possibility that Brett and Bess will also come, they've known Candace her entire life, after all."

"What about your grandparents?"

Foggy lets out a snort. "That's kind of a given, considering that Grams lives in New York while Grandfather Rod in Hoboken. They're coming, both of them. Expect a lot of fascinating tales of fishing from good old Roddy."

Matt huffs in what Foggy assumes is a small laugh. "From what I remember about your parents' house, there might not be place for all those people."

"Most of them are coming just for the graduation, though," Foggy says. "Uncle William, Aunt Jagoda, and Bill are coming on Tuesday, Elyse tagging with them, or at least that's what Mum told me. That plan is prone to change, however, depends on Bill's and El's work schedules. Grams and Grandfather Nelson are coming just for the graduation, Grams is picking him up and they're driving to Princeton together."

"Let me rephrase then: who's coming to this family dinner?"

"Just the immediate family. My parents, Cande, you, and me." Matt turns in his seat to face Foggy, who can see Matt's hand twitch on his lap. "Unless Candace has decided to invite someone else and neglected to mention. If not, there'll only be the five of us."

"Mhm."

"Hey, I never said it was going to be a big dinner party, just that we had to attend." Matt hmms again. "My mother would probably skin me alive if I came today without you in tow. Skin me, Matt. _Alive_."

"I'm sure you're exaggerating. Your mother is efficient, Foggy, so she wouldn't do that. Skinning someone alive takes _too much effort_."

Foggy's heart has to do something very funny then — like stop, at the sound of Matt's calm and collected and informative tone of voice, Foggy has a great and often overactive imagination, okay, and he doesn't need to imagine where Matt gained _that_ knowledge — because Matt laughs. Alright, no, he doesn't start laughing out right, but Foggy knows that he will. Someone who doesn't know Matt very well would focus on the tight press of his lips and smooth forehead and think that yes, this guy is serious. But Foggy knows that those thinly pressed lips mean that Matt is trying very hard not to laugh, and the barely there flutter of his nostrils means that he's failing.

Idiot.

"Your sense of humour is beyond me sometimes."

"I'm just surprised you didn't know that already. Isn't that, like, elementary butcher knowledge?"

Foggy punches the grinning idiot in the arm. A ticket inspector passing them by gives Foggy a strange look — probably in an attempt to silently communicate her stern disapproval of hitting helpless and extremely cute blind people — which Foggy shrugs off. "I'm sorry, did I say 'sometimes'? I meant ' _always_ '."

Matt grins even wider. "It's Candace's fault," he says, "she got me to watch the first episode of _Hannibal_. You never said that show was so good."

"I don't know if it's good, I dropped it after two episodes. The content of it disagreed with the content of my stomach."

He'd have been a very poor butcher. Or maybe it's just the cannibalism and murder that he doesn't like.

"You should watch it with me. The audio descriptions are hilarious. 'Hannibal suppresses a smirk' after delivering yet another cannibal pun..."

"Pass," Foggy murmurs. Louder, he says, "I feel personally wounded that you caved when Cande offered you _Hannibal_ but refused to watch _Downton Abbey_ with me."

" _Downton Abbey_ is a badly written soap opera, Foggy. Even I know that."

"Precisely!" Foggy waves his hands around. "That's the fun of it! You watch it to mock it. You watch it to be able to then read the weekly review on The Guardian website and agree with every one word!"

"I have better ways to spend my free time."

Foggy winces. "Yeah, I bet you do."

They fall silent. It's not an uncomfortable kind of silence — they're past that stage, they wouldn't work if they weren't — but it's not one of the good ones either, when you don't have to say even a single word, because you know that the other person gets you anyway, because you're perfectly matched and in tune. Foggy understands why Matt does what he does; hell, a tiny part of him thinks that if push came to shove, he could get out there as well ( _for you, I will_ ). Or maybe not. Point is, Foggy does understand why Matt goes out at night and risks his life and makes Foggy worry. Foggy understands it, but hates it with whole his heart. He hates Matt's compulsion to go, his lack of self-preservation instinct, hates every bruise and cut and scar. Will take them over Matt _dead_ any given day, but hates them. Hates it all.

And Matt knows it.

And it's not enough to make him stop.

"Sensate," Matt says suddenly.

Foggy frowns. Matt doesn't react. Foggy frowns harder, before, "Oh. Sorry. I frowned. Sensate what?"

"Sensate," Matt repeats. "I overheard--It's a TV show, right?"

And it clicks. "Oh," Foggy says. " _Sense8_. Yeah, it's, it's a Netflix show. What about it?"

"We could watch it. If you want. It has proper audio descriptions and all," Matt adds, hopefully.

Foggy wrinkles his nose. "No offense to the Netflix team, and good job on providing audio descriptions at all, they're doing God's work..."

An exasperated " _Foggy_ " interrupts him.

"... but my descriptions are always funnier and of better quality. They're tailor-made for your shit sense of humour, Murdock, so they have to be."

"So?"

"I guess we could spare one weekend to binge watch it." Foggy grins. "I'm grinning wide, by the way, because I'm proud of you for choosing quality science-fiction over something mind-numbingly boring like _House of Cards_."

"I have it on good authority that _House of Cards_ is great."

" _Pff_." Foggy shakes his head. "And whose authority is that?"

"Karen."

And really, at the end of the day, there is no arguing with Karen.

***

Foggy's dad waves at them from the platform when they get off the train at 4:10 pm, whole four minutes before the scheduled arrival time. Foggy grins and waves back, then offers Matt his arm and leads him towards his father. Foggy's dad takes Matt's bag from him, completely ignoring Foggy, and reaches his free hand to ruffle Matt's hair.

"Hey, kids," Ned Nelson greets them warmly, giving each of them a smile. "How was the trip?"

"Surprisingly quiet," Foggy says. "The crying toddler calmed down about thirty minutes in, then he must have fallen asleep."

Ned nods. "I parked just outside the station," he tells them, then waves his hand to get them going. "You're good, Matt?"

"Yes, Mr. Nelson, thank you." Matt's grip on Foggy's arm becomes a tad tighter. "Thank you for inviting me."

"Out of everyone coming you're the one person who doesn't need an invitation," Ned says. He fumbles with his jeans pocket, trying to take out the car keys. "And please, I've told you a million times, call me 'Ned'."

Matt nods, for a millionth time, and does not file that away for later. Foggy knows. Ned has asked Matt — maybe not a million times, but more than a few — not to call him 'Mr. Nelson'. 'Mr. Nelson', as far as Foggy's dad was concerned, was Rod Nelson, Foggy's famed and fish-obsessed grandfather. Foggy's dad didn't want to be called 'Mr. Nelson', because that made him feel old and fish-obsessed. Matt, for some reason, never truly registered that request.

Ned unlocks the car doors and gestures at the vehicle. "Hop in," he says and goes to throw first Matt's and then Foggy's small bags into the trunk, while Matt and Foggy make themselves comfortable in the backseat. 

Somewhat comfortable. Matt grimaces and wrinkles his nose in disgust. Taking the opportunity of his father still being out of the car and therefore out of the earshot, Foggy asks, "What's going on?"

"Nothing." Matt shakes his head. "It's just... Wet dog."

"What?"

"I can smell a wet dog. It's... not one of my favourite smells."

"What dog?" Foggy asks, but doesn't get an answer, because Ned gets into the car and starts the engine.

"Seatbelts?" Ned asks.

Foggy rolls his eyes. "We're not five, dad. What we are is hungry, however, so can we go?"

Ned chuckles and hits reverse, gets the car out of the parking lot and onto Washington Road, which takes them through West Windsor forest-y looking suburbs. Ned's silent until they pass Brunswick Pike. "Are you allergic to animal fur, Matt?"

Matt raises his brows in a quite smug manner and turns to Foggy. Wet dog. Damn it, Murdock, you, your smug face, and your nose. "No, Mr. Nelson."

"Ned."

"Ned," Matt corrects himself. It's no use, he'll call Foggy's dad 'Mr. Nelson' the next time he addresses him anyway. Ned's been trying to get Matt to stop doing that for three years now and so far his battle with Matt's deeply ingrained respectful formality was futile.

Foggy narrows his eyes and looks straight into the rearview mirror, hoping that his father will notice him when glancing behind the next time. "Why are you asking, dad?"

"Oh, it's nothing." Ned waves a hand, dismissing Foggy's concern. But he sounds suspiciously excited, so Foggy decides not to believe him. "Just a little 'leaving home' present that your mother and I got from Candace?"

"Cut the crap, dad. What is it? What did Candace do? I don't want to know, but I probably should."

"It's an Akita puppy," Ned blurts out. He looks at Foggy in the rearview mirror and smiles brightly. "She bought us an Akita puppy."

Wet dog indeed. Foggy looks to Matt, who's wearing that particular 'I don't know what my emotions are doing' face. He sort of settles for mildly distressed. Matt is not a big fan of dogs, but dogs, unfortunately, never got the memo and are big fans of Matt.

"His name is Deuce," Ned carries on, unaware of that mild distress that's overtaken the back section of the car. "He's twelve weeks old, so still a puppy. He's got a brindle coat and the fluffiest tale I've ever seen on a dog. Cande brought him home three days ago, said that he'll help me and mum not to feel lonely after she moves out. It was very nice of her."

It was. And it was much nicer, and would last longer, than what Foggy gave his parents when he moved out. Which was a bottle of expensive bourbon. Which his parents must have stress-drunk around the time he dropped out of college.

"Mum failed to mention that when we talked on Friday." Which was bad. Foggy's not allergic — he's never been allergic to anything, except that one time with cherries when he was twelve, but that was probably due to the cherries being full of pesticides rather than the cherries themselves — and he knows for a fact that Matt isn't either, but. Mum didn't know that, not about Matt. So. What would she have done if it turned out that Matt was, in fact, allergic, mhm? Kick the twelve-week-old puppy out of the house? Give him to a neighbour to dogsit? Or maybe kick Matt out of the house?

"She forgot." Dad shrugs. "She's been busy with trying to get Jagoda to tell her if she and William were staying overnight on Tuesday or not."

Foggy can sympathise with that. Getting Aunt Jagoda to talk and answer questions precisely was a difficult task and Dad never had the patience for that. Aunt Jagoda was... something. The worst part was, Foggy's cousin Bill was exactly like his mother; Foggy didn't envy the crazy woman that'll marry Bill one day.

They cross Carnegie Lake and drive down to the town, and soon they end up driving right through the main campus of Princeton Uni. Foggy sighs and looks out the window. It's changed a lot since he walked across the campus last. They pass a few students walking up and down the road in small groups, laughing, enjoying the hot summer afternoon now that the academic year is over and there are no classes to read up for, no exams to cram for. Maybe they're staying over for the summer school. Maybe they just haven't left yet. Princeton was a great place to live in.

"You miss it?" Ned asks him.

"Sometimes," Foggy replies. He loves New York and he loves and is proud of Columbia, he spent great seven years there, but he does miss Princeton. The relative quiet of the campus. The almost endless lawns and recreational spaces. Knowing that you're not in the middle of one of the busiest cities in the world.

"We'll be home in four minutes," Ned informs them, turning into Nassau Street, taking them away from the campus and more into the actual town-like part of Princeton. And then further down, to the residential part. Left into North Harrison Street, right into Mershon Drive, before finally pulling up on the driveway of the third house on the right, Cameron Court no. 39.

Ned turns off the engine and fiddles with some controls or buttons or other, Foggy's not sure, this whole super new and computerised Prius is not his cup of tea, he knows how to drive a car and he's used to a manual gearbox, the kind that Jess has in her old Beetle. This fancy stuff his dad has in his own car? Yeah, Foggy's not sure he'd be able to get it out of the driveway.

As it is, he does manage to open the door. He gets out himself, he lets Matt out, and finally gets the chance to look at his family home. There are blue ribbons decorating the entrance and the front porch, the tasteful Prussian blue of Princeton High. Then Foggy's mum opens the front door and beams at them, and a small but determined ball of brownish-grayish-black fur shoots past her and outside, runs up to the new arrivals and, predictably, ignores Foggy in favour of barking happily at Matt.

Matt hands Foggy his cane, which Foggy takes without a comment, and drops to one knee. He extends his hand palm-up and the puppy sniffs it over, tail wagging furiously, before starting to lick Matt's fingers. And then his wrist. And _then_ tugging at the cuff of Matt's shirt with its tiny puppy teeth. Matt laughs and pushes the puppy away, which in no way deters him; Deuce goes right back to alternating between licking Matt's palm and woofing at him.

"Are you a dog whisperer?" Foggy's mum asks, standing next to Foggy.

Anna smiles at Matt and Matt smiles back, because their psychic connection is as good as ever. "Dogs tend to like me, which I cannot say is always reciprocated. But this guy here seems nice," Matt adds, freeing his hand from the licking session. He puts in on the puppy's head instead and scratches behind his ears. Deuce sits down with a blissful expression, leans sideways and starts moving his back leg in tune with Matt's scratching, as if he was scratching behind his ear himself. 

Foggy's mum starts laughing and Foggy cannot help but join in. The cute delusional puppy. No wonder Candace chose him; knowing her, she probably got him at a half-price, too.

Foggy hears the trunk being closed and Ned appears with their bags, one in each hand. "Shall we come in?" he asks. "I distinctly remember someone complaining that they're hungry."

Matt ceases the scratching and lets Foggy hoist him up. Anna gathers him into a tight hug first, and presses a kiss to his cheek, before doing the same to Foggy. "Come on," she says after letting go of Foggy. She smiles and tugs some of Foggy's wayward hair behind his ear. "Let's get you settled. Dinner will be ready in thirty minutes."

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thank Kisei for sitting me down and trying to teach me Japanese, and when that failed, just translating things for me. Kisei told me that the dialogue between Foggy and Mr. Kita goes:
> 
> "Good morning," Foggy says when Mr. Kita answers the phone. "My name is Foggy Nelson, I'm from the law office of Nelson & Murdock."  
> "Yes?"  
> "I want to talk about Ms. Sallis. I'm her lawyer."  
> "Amanda?"  
> "Yes."  
> (...)  
> "Thank you, Mr. Kita. Thank you very much."
> 
> If she lied to me, do tell. :) She's a bit of a troll.


	2. a little body and a soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I consist of a little body and a soul._

Foggy's pleased to say that nothing in his room has changed since his last visit. That also means nothing in his room changed since he moved out eleven years ago, but that's not the point. The point is — mum kept her promise of never messing with Foggy's stuff and completely ignored everything. Which means that Foggy's old posters of Rani Mukherjee were halfway done with falling off the wall, and the dirty plate Foggy forgot to bring downstairs to the kitchen four months ago was doing well, developed a mould, and the bacteria in it were most likely close to discovering fire.

Still. Thanks, mum.

Foggy drops his bag on the — unmade, just like he left it — bed and ventures out of his room and onto the corridor, and from there to the opposite end of it, where the guest bedroom is located. Or the room that used to be a guest bedroom, years ago, before Foggyp dragged a reluctant wounded duck home for Thanksgiving and everyone collectively fell in love with said wounded duck. The next time Foggy dragged Matt home — for Christmas, a month later, and Matt was even _more_ reluctant then, it was almost as if Foggy's family being nice to him was somehow worse than being completely ignored — the guest bedroom has been cleared of excessive crap that was accumulated there and designated 'Matt's bedroom'. Matt's bedroom, not the guest bedroom, and Matt has been the only person to sleep there in the five years that followed. 

Foggy knocks on the door to _Matt's bedroom_ and asks, "May I come in?"

He hears Matt laugh and then the reply, "Yeah."

Foggy pushes the door open and steps inside. Matt's bedroom — courtesy of being the former guest bedroom — is much smaller than Foggy's or Candace's rooms. It's also very bland, with boring white-gray wallpaper on one side and the other walls painted a slightly darker gray. There's a bed and a chest of drawers and a small bedside table, but that's it. Back when they were in law school, he and Matt would often end up in Foggy's room anyway, sitting on the floor, with their textbooks and cases strewn all over Foggy's desk. The paper trail sometimes even migrated to Candace's room, pissing her teen self off.

Matt's lying on his bed with his eyes closed when Foggy comes in. He nudges Matt's legs and Matt moves them aside, giving Foggy space to sit on the bed. "We still have fifteen minutes before the dinner and I've just heard Candace downstairs. How about we go and annoy my sister while she's still just a high schooler and we can get away with it?"

"Why not." Matt reaches for the bedside table to pick up his glasses. He sits up on the bed, puts them on, then he drops his feet to the floor and stands up, stretching. "Is your mum making a duck?"

"A duck?" Foggy sniffs and yup, even he can detect the smell of borderline burning duck coming from the kitchen. "I guess."

"You've always said that she wasn't good at cooking."

Foggy bursts out laughing. Matt frowns, clearly lost. "Oh, buddy." Foggy wipes a tear off his cheek. "Unless she bought it or it was gifted to her, it's Dad who made it. Dad prepared it and made it, and he probably only asked mum to keep the temperature right and make sure it doesn't burn. Which, considering that even I can smell it all up here, she failed at. I've told you. My mum is kitchen illiterate." 

"It smells nice."

"It smells like it's on fire."

Matt shrugs one shoulder and heads for the door. Foggy rolls his eyes and slides off the bed after him, onto the corridor and then down the stairs. Matt's cane has been left in his room; after five years of coming to the Nelsons — every single Thanksgiving and Christmas since they've met, plus most of the summer holidays — he's familiar with the layout of the house enough to move without it. The fact that Foggy's mum has made sure that no furniture was ever moved out of its usual place helped.

And his spectacular senses. That, too.

"Hi, jerk," Foggy greets Candace when they enter the living room.

Candace is sitting cross-legged on the couch, with a bowl of Cheetos on her right and her right hand _in_ the bowl of Cheetos. On any other day mum would kill her for eating crap before dinner, but today is the last Sunday before graduation and Anna Nelson wouldn't want any of her kids to die without at least a high school diploma. So, knowing that she's safe, Candace is munching on the Cheetos and doesn't even look away from the TV and to the older brother she hasn't seen in a few weeks.

"Hey, doof," she shoots back. She pats the space on her left, inviting Foggy to sit down. Which Foggy does, while Matt settles on an armchair. "Hey, Matt. You okay?"

"I'm fine."

Candace drags her eyes away from whatever dumb program she's watching and glances at Matt. "You sure? Last time I saw you, you weren't so hot. I was worried."

The last time Candace saw him was at that disaster of a birthday party at Grams, a fact that Matt seems to realise at the same time as Foggy. Foggy grimaces and Matt drags his teeth over his lower lip. "I'm fine, Candace. Thanks for finding my cane, by the way."

"Sure thing," Candace says. Her narrowed eyes make it obvious that she doesn't believe Matt, but can't exactly pinpoint where the lie is. "I heard they're expensive."

Matt lets out a short, clipped laugh. "Yeah," he confirms. He motions at the TV. "What are you watching?"

" _Checkmate with Chess Roberts_ ," Candace tells him. "It's a gossipy talk show? Before the commercial break they were talking about the Avengers. The team was spotted in Peru, they have some new members. The new girl kicked serious ass in the footage, the Red Witch..."

"Scarlet Witch," Foggy corrects her.

Candace waves her hand. "Scarlet Witch, yeah. Chess Roberts asked her guests who their favourite member of the Avengers was. They haven't said yet, but I think we all can agree on what the answer will be, right?"

"Hawkeye," Foggy says in time with Matt's "Black Widow" and Candace's "Thor".

Foggy and Candace exchange surprised glances, and even Matt seems baffled. "Black Widow?" Foggy asks. "Seriously? You pick the supermodel even here?"

"I have no idea what she looks like, Foggy," Matt tells him patiently, and this time he's even telling the truth. Neither of them has ever seen the Avengers live, and Matt cannot see flat images like newspaper pictures or video footage. Damn. So maybe it _is_ some super extra sixth sense. "I simply like her story. Former KGB spy. Doesn't have any powers, relies only on her training. That's much more admirable than Stark's suits. And she's friends with Captain America."

"I knew your fanboyism had to have had a hand in this choice," Foggy murmurs, which earns him a cushion to the face. "Domestic abuse!"

"I could ask you the same question," Matt says, grinning. "Hawkeye? Are you for real? _Hawkeye_?"

Foggy shrugs, but it's Candace who answers for him. "Foggy's deeply biased, because of his weird sense of kinship with Hawkeye. He's not thinking straight. And since no one asked me, I'll answer anyway: Thor is my favourite Avenger, because he's the most dreamy," Foggy makes a gagging sound, "and because he's a kickass alien who could take me on a trip across the universe."

"I can shooow you the wooorld," Foggy intones.

"You need to shut up," Candace states. "There's a reason why Around Eight didn't want you to join."

"I'd like to know more about Foggy's weird sense of kinship with Hawkeye," Matt says, posing himself expectantly on the edge of the armchair. And he smirks. Dear God, he smirks. Foggy's fucked.

The Universe throws him a bone for once, because before Candace can start her tirade on Foggy's weird sense of kinship with the Avenger Hawkeye, the commercial break ends and Chess Roberts comes back to deliver her checkmate. All her guests agree that their favourite Avenger is Captain America.

"Well that's boring," Candace says and passes Matt the Cheetos.

Chess Roberts moves on to compliment Hope Van Dyne's dress at last weekend's charity gala in Los Angeles and proceeds to gossip about the new Pym Technologies CEO and whether or not her recent trip to New York was a sign that she wanted to pursue a merger with Stark Industries on both a commercial and a personal level.

Foggy loses all interest in the program until its last minutes, when Chess Roberts teases the topics for next Sunday's episode and casually name-drops Matt. Okay, not _Matt_ Matt but _Daredevil_ Matt, yet _still Matt_. And Foggy never expected Matt to be mentioned on WHiH, least of all like _this_.

"Next week with my special guests Patricia Walker and Hedy Wolfe we'll talk about what makes superheroes sexy. If you want to contribute, head to our website and let us know who has the better ass, Captain America or New York's own Daredevil."

Matt freezes with his mouth open and a handful of Cheetos in his clutch. Foggy stares at the TV because there's no way he heard it right. There's--just--no way that someone would ask that question. Or turned it into an official internet poll, for that matter. Captain America was a national treasure while Daredevil was--Foggy's best friend--but also a low-key Hell's Kitchen vigilante that the Bulletin and the Bugle only had crap def pictures of. There's _no way_ anyone would even ask such a question and expected people to form an opinion based on HD official Avengers pics of Cap and the blurry shots of Matt in that godawful costume.

"Well that one's easy," Candace says, somehow missing the shocked look on the face of her brother and the quietly distressed noise that Matt is now making. "Daredevil."

There must exist some universal conspiracy to give Foggy Nelson a heart attack. "What?"

"Have you _seen_ the pictures of him online?" Candace asks and Foggy has to shake his head 'no', because he was doing everything he could _not_ to find out too much about Matt's nightlife. "Brother, you're missing out. With all due respect to Cap, Daredevil wins. A+ butt, 11/10, would bang if given the chance."

Foggy chokes on an reply, because he _didn't need to know any of that_ , oh Jesus Christ, _Candace_ , what the fuck. Matt, meanwhile, drops the bowl and the Cheetos strew on the floor around his feet. He's so red you could probably fry an egg on his cheek.

"What?" Candace asks. "You can't tell me you disagree, Fog."

Dad, thankfully, saves Foggy from having to grace that with an answer, and all of them from learning more about Candace's disturbing thoughts. "Kids!" Ned Nelson yells from the kitchen. "Dinner is ready!"

***

Monday morning Anna employs their help at decorating the house. She lets them into the kitchen and gives them a box of approximately a million Prussian blue balloons, and tells them to inflate them all so that Ned could later attach them all to the fence around the house and the railings of the front porch. And possibly seventeen additional places, Foggy muses. His dad's the kind of person who goes overboard with everything he does. He cannot contain his excitement for the graduation. Not to mention, it's been twelve years since Foggy graduated high school, Dad came up with hefty new ideas over that time.

Like a freaking balloon arch. A _balloon arch_.

Foggy's too afraid to think what Dad will end up doing for Candace's wedding. It'll be the only wedding he gets to plan, so poor Cande will have to suffer all of dad's ideas. Foggy's hard pressed to feel sorry for her.

Candace comes downstairs around noon. "You busy?"

Foggy gestures at the million sans fifty two balloons. "What do you think?" Candace shifts her weight. "What do you want?"

She ignores Foggy and turns to address Matt. "You were a valedictorian, right, Matt?"

Credit where credit's due, Matt doesn't blush. He's spent most of last evening hiding in his room, altering between with and without Foggy, away from Candace. He must have got over her disturbing revelation enough to join everyone downstairs. He doesn't raise his head to face her, though. "I was, yes."

"Great." Candace claps her hands. "I need your help writing my speech."

Foggy stares at her, balloons momentarily forgotten. "You don't have your speech yet?" Candace shakes her head. "How long have you known that you were a speaker?"

"Almost two months," she admits.

"And in those two months you didn't have the time to write your graduation speech? You're going to do a half-assed job now? You have the rehearsal in an hour!"

"I don't have to present the speech at the rehearsal," Candace snaps at him. "And I don't want to. I want it to be a surprise to everyone. Not like you'd know, you weren't a speaker."

Fair point. Foggy shrugs and goes back to the balloons, while Candace turns back to Matt. "So," she asks, "what should my speech be like? Our school doesn't choose a single valedictorian, we choose three speakers, for achievement, for spirit, and for future, who join the class president. I've been chosen as the speaker for future. And I have no idea what I could talk about."

"Should have thought about it sooner."

"Tell them what you'd like to hear yourself," Matt offers.

"It's supposed to be inspiring, but try to avoid the pathos of most of these type of speeches," Foggy adds.

"Center the speech on someone who inspires you."

Foggy snorts. "Not everyone has the same case of hero-worship towards a historical figure as you do, Murdock."

"Someone who inspires me, right." Candace nods. "You know, I might have the guy. That was actually helpful, thanks, Matt."

She turns on her heel and heads back upstairs. Foggy can hear her slam the door to her room. He turns towards Matt. "If she ends up quoting someone super dead and ends up boring all the guests out of their minds, it'll be your fault."

"She'll do fine," Matt says, but doesn't sound convinced.

***

They go through all one hundred and sixty three balloons almost in time to get to Princeton High for the graduation picnic. They get to the school grounds fashionably late and right in the entrance are ambushed by two beefy guys in Go Tigers! T-shirts and are given a 'class 2015' pins. That is nice. The graduation picnic — a Princeton tradition — was a far less exciting event when Foggy was a senior. There was a BBQ and the students haunted the school grounds; there definitely were no blue pins being distributed to guests, no impromptu a cappella battles between the four clubs like the one that's taking place on their right. 

And definitely no fully choreographed farewell routines from the cheerleaders. Wow. It's nice. And impressive, and completely _new_ , which might explain why Candace didn't write her graduation speech — her duties as the cheerleading team captain in her mind overtook her duties as one of the key graduation speakers.

It's a good thing she's not the class president, otherwise the whole thing might have flopped.

"Foggy!" Candace shouts the moment the cheerleaders take their last bow and disperse among the picnic attendees, who are all cheering and clapping loudly. "How was it? Did you like it?"

"It was okay," Foggy says, because deep at heart he is a dick and loves messing with his sister.

"Okay?!" Candace punches him in the arm. "You're such a dick sometimes, you know?

"I think you did a great job," Matt chips in.

Candace gestures at him angrily. "See?" she asks Foggy. "At least Matt knows what's good. Oh, Matt," she turns to him, "I wish you could have seen my sick backflip off the pyramid."

To be perfectly honest, Matt's better than her. But Matt chuckles in agreement and takes Candace's arm and allows her to lead him towards a group of girls in the micro-mini black-and-blue dresses that were the Princeton High cheerleader's uniform. Candace's group of friends, Foggy assumes, because he's never actually met any of Candace's friends. Which was weird, come to think of it.

Anyway. They hang around the picnic for about two hours and Foggy is granted the privilege of meeting most of Candace's friends at last. Tammy and Glory are her fellow cheerleaders, the vice-captain and this year's prom queen respectfully, while Cody works with Candace on _The Tower_. Foggy even manages to get introduced to the infamous ex-boyfriend Tom; this meeting pains him especially, because Tom has a great sense of humour and plays cello for the Studio Band, and would be an amazing person if only he weren't an irredeemable douchebag.

Most of the teachers he sees are new and came to the school after he'd graduated. The one person he does recognise is Gary Snyder, the current headmaster whom Foggy somewhat remembers as the new and nervous science teacher from his senior year. Everyone else is — everyone else is just gone, they moved away or retired or _died_ , in two cases.

It's just after 4 pm when Candace finds him and Matt standing on the outskirts of the soccer pitch that was commandeered by the Picnic Committee this year. She's still wearing her cheerleader outfit, but her neatly combed ponytail is in disarray, her face is pink with excitement and she's panting heavily. Whatever the seniors have been doing right now, it must have been fun.

"I think we should go," Candace announces, accepting the cup of apple juice that Foggy hands her. "You know, leave the party before it sinks."

"You think it will sink?"

Candace nods and gulps the apple juice down in one go. "Oh yeah. I've seen Tom's best friend Blaine sneak in a few bottles of vodka. It's about to go down hard, I don't want to be here to see it happen." She hands back the plastic cup. Foggy rolls his eyes, but takes it. Jesus, Cande, you could throw it away yourself. "Plus, I still need to rewrite my speech for tomorrow."

" _Re_ write?" Foggy asks. "Does that mean that the mighty Candace managed to form a coherent outline?"

Candace flips him off. "She did. The mighty Candace also wants to go with you two to Ivy Inn this evening, to celebrate her graduating into the truly adult life."

"Why not go tomorrow?" Matt asks, because he's never been to the Ivy Inn and therefore has no idea what the experience entails.

"Because you're leaving tomorrow and have to be at work on Wednesday, and you can't go to the Ivy Inn if you're of legal drinking age and not drink," Candace explains patiently. "Especially since Mondays are craft beer nights."

Matt, fancy shit beer connoisseur that he is, beams hearing that. He taps Foggy's elbow and leans in to whisper, "We need to go to that Ivy Inn."

"I'll have you know that the Ivy Inn is a place that has been fundamental to my transition from cute preteen Foggy to dashing asshole young adult Foggy," Foggy tells him. "It also contributed to my love for softball."

"We should definitely go there, then."

Foggy sighs theatrically and totally for show, because deep down he's giddy as fuck. He's never taken Matt to the Ivy Inn before. He wasn't joking when he said that that bar was essential to forming his identity; he spent many an evening there with his high school friends, drinking cola and tea, pretending they were much cooler than they were in reality. He took Debbie Harris there for their first proper date, and that was still in those times when the Ivy Inn didn't serve actual food.

He can't remember why he's never taken Matt there. Maybe there was never a good occasion for that. Or maybe because that was one part of his life that was tied to Princeton and the people he knew back here, to the person he was before Columbia, and he didn't want to intermingle that with who he was now, post-Columbia and post-Matt.

Maybe he wanted to keep the memory of dashing asshole young adult Foggy and his not so cool friends intact. It was all that was left of them, after all.

"Alright," he finds himself saying instead, "what time does the craft beer night event start?"

***

They take a walk home down Hamilton Avenue, with Candace narrating, telling Matt all about the fancy houses they pass and the lawns that need urgent watering. It takes them twenty minutes to get to Gordon Way, and from there it's two minutes and two turns to get to Cameron Court.

Instead of a smile or even a single good word, Anna welcomes them home with a small bowl of ice cream each. It's a good call on her part; it's unbearably hot outside and they have just spent over two hours roaming school grounds. They collapse on the couch — or armchair, in Matt's case — in the living room and Foggy would be content if he didn't have to move from there ever again. He closes his eyes and sighs. The big windows are opened wide and there's enough breeze to cool the room, he's got Dad's homemade lemongrass ice cream and has no pressing obligations to attend to. Sure, there's that planned outing to the Ivy Inn, but they don't _have to_ go, nothing compels them to. They could stay home instead. Foggy could die in peace here.

He hears Candace lick her spoon all over and then drop it into her bowl. "Matt? Could we go to my room, I want you to listen to my speech draft."

Foggy cracks one eye open and glances at his sister. "Can't you bring your draft and read it here?"

"No," Candace says. "I don't want you to listen to it. You weren't a valedictorian, so I don't care about your opinion."

 _I hope you trip on the stairs tomorrow and break a leg_ , is what Foggy thinks.

"Fair enough," is what he says.

He closes his eye. Candace gets off the couch and soon he hears Matt stand up too. They talk in hushed voices as they make their way towards the stairs and up, and then Foggy can't hear them anymore. Which is fine, absolutely fine. Candace is right, he never had to prepare a motivational speech to deliver in front of all his classmates, not like Matt did, not like she now has to. He had a chance, once, but he declined, and was never asked again.

He feels the couch dip next to him. He doesn't open his eyes and waits for the new arrival to announce themselves. "You've got a minute?"

Dad.

Foggy cranes his head back and stretches. "Yeah. What's up?"

"Are you feeling alright?"

Oh dear God. Foggy opens his eyes and hoists himself into a more sitting, less slouching position on the coach. His dad looks--worried. And _that_ in itself is worrisome, because Ned Nelson is not the kind of person who worries. Ned Nelson is the kind of person who takes things as they are and who always, _always_ tries to look for the positives, the bright side of everything. It's Foggy's mum who worries. Dad? No. Or at least not so openly.

"I'm fine, dad."

Ned shifts on the couch. "Mum said that you didn't look great when she saw you at Grams' party," he explains softly. "I'm just worried."

Foggy closes his eyes again and takes a deep breath. "I'm fine, dad, really. You don't have to worry. The last few months at the office have been crazy, there's that tough case that I'm working on. I'll be pressing charges, it might even get somewhere. It's been a lot of hard work, I was just exhausted. Could you please tell mum to stop being paranoid? Really, don't worry."

"We always worry, Franklin." 

"Dad..." Foggy sighs.

"When are you meeting with Doctor Kettlewell?"

Foggy sighs again, louder this time. It'll probably be easier on everyone if he just goes along with the questioning. "Sunday in two weeks. Raza suggested the weekend, because I might have to stay overnight, but Saturday is the 4th, so that's out of the question."

"Raza, hmm?" Ned asks, smiling.

"Doctor Rafiee," Foggy clarifies. "Come on, dad, you know whom I mean, _obviously_. You've known her for almost seventeen years. She's on the first name basis with everyone in this family."

"Raza Rafiee," Ned says fondly. "Seventeen years in and she's still the best intern I've ever met."

"Not an intern anymore, you know that. Last time I saw her, Georgia said that there's a possibility that Raza will become the new head of the department."

Ned raises his brows. "Really? Kettlewell is leaving?"

"Kettlewell was old seventeen years ago, dad, now he's just _older_ ," Foggy says, rolling his eyes. "He's ancient."

"So, Sunday in two weeks. Will you stop by?"

"Probably not," Foggy says. "I need to get back to New York as soon as they're done, Monday at the latest, Matt and I have the first hearing in one of the Sallis cases. I should stay at home working my ass off instead of hospital hopping."

"Everything will be alright," Ned assures him, though Foggy's certain that it's _Ned_ who needs to hear that, not Foggy. "Tell Matt."

"Jesus, dad, _drop it_. You're worse than mum."

"You'll do as you please," Ned says, which, _thank you_ , at least one person acknowledges Foggy's right to decide, "but I think you should. In case not everything will be alright."

"That says the resident optimist. Wow, dad, I'm shocked."

Ned shrugs. "I believe that everything will be fine. But I also acknowledge the fact that people around me have the right to know that it might not be the case. Don't you think he deserves that?"

Foggy does. Foggy _knows_ that Matt deserves that, knows that not telling Matt the whole truth — while not technically lying — is an awful thing to do, but. Yeah. But. That conversation is the last he wants to have, because he's been in this place before and it's never ended nicely.

After all, there's a perfectly valid reason why he stopped disclosing information about his life that was not relevant at the time. And this was not relevant. Hasn't been for eleven years. And, hopefully, in two weeks time he'll find out that it's still not.

***

At 6:30 pm, with having thirty minutes to spare, Foggy opens the door to the Ivy Inn to Matt and Candace and leads them inside, where they claim a corner table for themselves. For a brief moment Foggy considers taking them out onto the terrace, the weather is beautiful and it'd be nice to sit outside, but decides against it. From the window he can see a bunch of college-age kids outside, making use of the beautiful weather, sitting by the garden tables in a haze of cigarette smoke. Bearing in mind how Matt loathed spending time in the company of smokers during law school parties, Foggy decides that it'd be inhumane to compel him to spend the entire evening surrounded by them.

"This is the Ivy Inn," Foggy announces the moment Matt and Candace sit down. "The best place in the whole of Princeton."

The right corner of Matt's mouth rises in a smirk. "Is it? Objectively? Or is it just your favourite place that _objectively_ is a dump?"

Foggy gasps as if personally offended and presses a hand to his chest. "I beg your pardon! This is a fine and respected establishment!"

"You said the same about Josie's when you first took me there."

"You saying Josie's is not a fine establishment, Murdock? That it's not respected?"

"Maybe by you," Matt says, mock serious. "Okay. Shoot."

Foggy clears his throat. "So. The Ivy Inn. As you may have realised, we're sitting by a corner table, because since coming here I've spied at least ten Quads coming in and out from the Inn garden and let me tell you, that's not the type of person you want to sit by if you're looking for a nice, quiet evening."

"I'm nodding politely, because I didn't understand a word of what you just said."

"Members of one of the eating--" Foggy waves a hand. "You know what, I'll explain later. So, from our corner table we have a great view of the main hall of the Inn. There's a long bar counter made of solid wood, oak, I think, that curves like the letter 'L', in the middle of the room. There aren't bar stools around it, just tiny bar-friendly chairs. Behind the counter, more alcohol than you can imagine, the Ivy Inn has always had a great choice of poisons."

Foggy points to the opposite side of the room. "There's the second chamber there, they have a pool table there. It's the place where I've been repeatedly cheated out of my pocket money when I was sixteen. And over there there's the entrance to the terrace, which is a lovely place that's currently overrun by the Quads. I should have realised they'd all be here, the leftovers that decided to stick around Princeton after the end of the year. I mean, it's craft beer night, _of course_ they'd come."

"Why do you keep pointing at stuff?" Candace asks. "It's not like Matt can see it. No offence," she adds, glancing at Matt.

"None taken," Matt replies.

"A lot of things here are green and gold," Foggy continues. "The outside of the Inn is painted green and gold, the tables and chairs outside are green and yellowish brown, some of the walls inside are green too. The Ivy Inn's co-ed softball team's colours are yellow and green as well. It's all because of the original owner. Dickey was a fan of Green Bay Packers."

"A softball team?" Matt asks, raising a brow. "Might this have something to do with why you keep a softball bat at our office?"

Foggy grins. "Maybe. I grinned, by the way, because that was an astounding deduction, Sherlock."

He carries on telling Matt about the Inn and the various misadventures of dashing asshole young adult Foggy, and Matt seems more and more amused with each passing second, either by Foggy's enthusiasm about the place or the amount of knowledge Foggy amassed about its history. It shouldn't be surprising, least of all to Matt; Foggy loves Princeton the way Matt loves Hell's Kitchen. Sure, Foggy loves Hell's Kitchen too, that's where he is from, that's where he made his first friends and spent the first thirteen years of his life. But Princeton's where he spent some of the most important ones, and he loves it too.

Candace gets bored with the storytelling — it's nothing she hasn't heard before, she's pretty much a Princeton native, they moved out of Hell's Kitchen when she was two years old, there's no way she remembers it, Princeton's all she's ever known — and goes to the bar to get something to drink. 

"Today's bartender's named Ollie," she informs them when she gets back to the table, sitting down and sipping her cola. "They have four beers from microbreweries in New York. Hoptimus Prime, Big Ditch Excafetor, Galaxy Farm, and Cyclhops. On tap for 5 dollars a pint, 4 dollars if you bought a student event ticket."

Foggy squints. "Cyclhops? I know that one. Looks great, tastes kind of bland. 3/10, would not recommend unless there was nothing else to drink."

"What is it with you and scores?" Matt laughs. "It's like talking to an Amazon review."

"Bad jab," Candace says. She tips her glass and tries to catch the one ice cube that still hasn't melted. "0/10, would not recommend for future use."

Matt gets the Cyclhops, the idiot, because he cannot simply accept a piece of friendly advice and is a stubborn contrary son of a bitch. Foggy gets a pint of the Hoptimus, which turns out to have a nice grapefruit-y aroma that Foggy's _sure_ would go well with food from that Thai place near Matt's. He sips his beer, content, and watches as Matt struggles with his choice, tries hard not to grimace or wince or make cut-off disgusted sounds. Oh yes, that's what you get for not listening to your friends, who only ever have your best interest at heart.

"How's the beer?" Foggy asks sweetly when Matt finally caves and makes a face, and puts his glass on the table, pushing it away.

"3/10 is a very generous rating."

Foggy chuckles and pushes his own glass towards Matt. Hoptimus Prime Matt ends up enjoying much more.

***

"Borrow me ten dollars," Candace murmurs, her eyes set firmly upon the entrance to the other room of the Inn. Foggy turns in his chair to glance that way, notices two guys of approximately college age and Tom the Irredeemable Douchebag. One of the college kids looks like a slightly older bad copy of Tom the Douchebag, which probably makes him Tom's brother.

"Absolutely not."

"Foggy, come on," Candace pleads. "I'll give it back, with interest."

Foggy smacks his lips, conveying his disapproval, but reaches for his wallet and pulls out a ten dollar bill. "Please don't end up killing anybody," he tells Cande, firmly, because it's important to establish boundaries. "I wasn't joking when I said Matt and I are too broke to defend you _pro bono_."

"Chill, brother." Candace takes the money and pecks him on the cheek. "Be back in about twenty."

"Is she going to play pool?" Matt asks.

"Yeah." Foggy moves his chair so that he can have the perfect view of the pool table. Candace joins Tom, his brother and friend; she cocks her hip and twirls a strand of hair around her finger, looking like the picture of pure innocence. Way to go, Candace, fool them into a false sense of security. Tom's brother shrugs and hands her a cue, bowing when she moves past him and towards the table. Oh, they won't know what hit them. "She's really good at it. Like, freakishly good. Mum taught her. Mum's the _best_ at pool, Matt, she kicks ass. I remember, back when we still lived in Hell's Kitchen, she was banned from two different bars for being too good."

Matt waves in the general direction of the pool table. "Why don't you join them?"

Foggy snorts. "Why do you think I was cheated out of my pocket money at the ripe age of sixteen, Matt?" he asks. "I suck at this. I'm really, really bad."

"I could teach you."

"You can't play pool," Foggy says, huffing out a laugh. Matt, however, doesn't seem amused. "Wait. You know how to play pool? No, wait again, of course you know to play pool, why am I even asking."

"I know how to play pool. And I'm good. Really good."

Matt says that without a hint of self-consciousness, but with a smirk. He simply states it as a fact — he's _good_ at playing pool. For someone possessing some of the worst sense of self-worth, the worst self-esteem out of anyone Foggy's ever met, Matt could be vain. A self-satisfied smirking peacock.

"But not as good as my mum," Foggy tells him, because that's also a fact. Anna Nelson is the undisputed queen of pool. Foggy's fairly certain Matt's never been banned from anywhere just for being too good to handle. At playing pool, that is, Foggy could believe that Matt's been banned from somewhere for being too good-looking to handle.

Foggy could barely handle it at times. First being roommates with Matt, now being friends and partners with Matt was like being friends and partners with a wayward Hugo Boss model: people always turned their heads, but never after you.

"Maybe I'm better than your mum."

Foggy fake-gasps. "Those are fighting words, Matt. The moment Cande's done destroying those guys, you get your ass up and prove it."

"Why?" Matt asks, the smirk still firmly in place. "Is it so hard to believe? We did have the same teacher."

Well fuck it.

But of course. Who else could have taught Matt how to play pool but the blind goddamn ninja asshole? Who else could have taught _Mum_ how to play pool but her blind goddamn ninja asshole father, for that matter? Grams didn't know how to play, never did, never wanted to learn. Mum's been playing it since she was a kid, so really, who else?

Foggy was going to take Matt up on that offer to teach him — no harm in trying to learn that again, right — because he wanted to see Matt hustle and play pool, but now that desire has disappeared. Poof! and it's gone.

But maybe once they're back in New York. They could ask Josie to let them stay longer. "I'm not drunk enough to even think about this."

He stands up and goes to the bar counter. From the corner of his eyes he sees Candace return to their table, a wad of notes in her grasp and a big smile on her reddened face. "Two pints of Excafetor, separate glasses." He glances towards their table once more, where Candace is gesticulating lively, no doubt telling Matt about her hustling Tom and his companions out of their money. "And one cola for a lady."

"Make that two colas, he's paying," says a sweet voice on his right.

It's a good thing he wasn't handed the beer yet, because sure as hell he'd have dropped it immediately after hearing this. No way. There's just _no way_. He turns his head to the right, fully expecting to see someone different and not _her_ , but no. Nope, no such luck.

"Hey," the woman says and smiles, smiles the same smile that Foggy once fell for.

"Hey," he says back, because any higher brain functions have crashed and this seems like the only thing he can say. He gulps. "Hey, Debbie."

The bartender puts the two glasses of beer and two glasses of cola on the counter, and shoos them away. Debbie grabs the colas and Foggy takes the beers, and they move away from the counter, making place for other clients who want to order refreshments or food.

She hasn't changed, Foggy notices. Her hair might be a bit shorter and she's wearing a fitted dress instead of an oversized sweater and leggings in which Foggy's seen her last, but she hasn't changed. Her smile is still bright and wide and contagious, and she still gets wrinkles around her eyes when happy and amused. She's still the most beautiful woman he's ever seen and for a second he feels as if he were transported back in time, to their high school days when they used to come to the Inn for karaoke nights and trivia quizzes, and had fun and were happy.

"What are you doing here?" he blurts out. The days when they had fun and were happy are long gone.

She glances at him over her shoulder. "Same as you, I imagine," she says. "I'm here for Candace's graduation."

She moves across the room to where their table is located in the corner, which means she must have spotted them sitting there before she approached Foggy at the bar. Candace notices her coming and squeals, jumps off her chair in her excitement.

Debbie puts the colas onto their table before enveloping Candace in a tight hug. "Hey, Cande."

"You made it, you made it, you made it!" Candace repeats over and over, happy, and jumps in the embrace.

"What do you mean 'you made it'?" Foggy asks, putting the beers on the table as well, with a bit more force than necessary. Some of the beer spills out of the glass.

Candace wiggles out of Debbie's embrace. "I invited her," she explains.

Foggy splays his hands open in an 'I don't get it' gesture. "Why?"

"Because," Candace says, "Debbie is the older sister I always wanted, but never had, because I was saddled with you."

"First of all, rude. Second of all," here he turns to Debbie, "why did you come? We haven't spoken in years."

"I came because Candace invited me and I think of her as the little sister I always wanted, but never had," Debbie replies, and flashes Candace a grin. "And it's just you who hasn't spoken to me in years, Foggy. I keep in touch with the rest of your family."

That was news. Foggy glares at Debbie, who shrugs it off, and then at Candace, who doesn't even care. 

"Debbie?" Matt asks suddenly, tilting his head in a curious manner. "Debbie Harris?"

Debbie nods. It takes Foggy a moment to remember that they're in the presence of outsiders to Matt's secret, so Matt cannot admit that he registered that. Or perhaps he didn't register that at all. Concentrating in a loud and crowded place like this was difficult and he did need to concentrate to 'see' (they needed to work on better terminology). "Oh, sorry. She nodded." He gestures at Matt. "Debbie, this is Matt Murdock, my associate. Matt, this is Debbie Harris."

Debbie starts. "I'm so sorry," she says, reaching across the table to take Matt's hand and shake it. "I didn't realise. Half of the people here are wearing sunglasses because they think it makes them cool."

"That's fine," Matt says, squeezing her hand. Foggy can hear the undercurrent of amusement in his voice. "It's nice to finally put a voice to your name. Foggy has told me a lot about you."

Bullshit. And Debbie knows it too, because she arches a brow at Foggy. "Has he now?"

Mack backtracks. "Well, he told me a little bit."

"For example?"

"You were his high school sweetheart."

That — and the bees story, but that's courtesy of Foggy's mum's need to embarrass her children in front of people she loved better — is the extent of Matt's knowledge about Debbie. Which Debbie also knows, or at least strongly suspects. She knows Foggy. One could say that she knows him better than anyone — she's known him for more than a half of his life, after all, she's been there for every single major event of teen as well as dashing asshole young adult Foggy's existence.

"A high school girlfriend," Debbie repeats and somehow manages not to drown that term in mockery. "That's what we're calling it now?"

Foggy shrugs.

Candace taps their neighbour's shoulder and asks the man if they could take away one of the chairs. The man agrees, so Candace drags an extra chair over to their table and puts it between her own and Foggy's, and invites Debbie to sit with them. She does. She perches on the chair and crosses her legs, and her dress slides up, uncovering half of her thigh. Not that Foggy's looking. He's staring intently at a burned spot on their table, someone must have dropped a cigarette there, or maybe left a match, it's a good thing the table didn't caught fire.

Two notes appear in front of his eyes. Someone wiggles them in his line of sight, trying to get his attention. "Here," Candace says and the notes disappear, she puts them next to his elbow instead. "The ten dollars that I borrowed and five extra for doing me the favour of lending me money. It took me fifteen minutes to hustle them out of all they had."

"Fifteen minutes?" Debbie asks, sounding impressed. "Someone got good. High five, girl!"

Matt takes one glass — and not the one from which some beer has spilt — and runs a finger over the rim of it. "So, Debbie," he starts, "what do you do?"

"I'm an architect," she says simply. It's an understatement. She's a great architect, she interned for Michael G. Imber Architects, she worked for some of the best firms on the West Coast, her projects have been shortlisted for the Palladio Awards for three consecutive years. "My friend and I have a firm together, Kruma Harris Architects."

"Never heard of it."

"No reason why you should, we've never done a project on the East Coast. Yet, hopefully." She winks at Cande. "I'd love to come back here, the California sun is sometimes too much."

"You work with commercial or residential buildings?"

"Mostly residential, though we have planned a few offices over the years."

They were one of the studios that worked on the Chinese Theatre after it went in flames in 2013 and that's how they came in contact with Stark Industries. Their remodelling of the company's Los Angeles headquarters earned them their second Palladio nomination.

"Can't say that I'm interested in architecture myself," Matt says, "but I do appreciate all the hard work that goes into the visuals."

Foggy snickers into his glass, Candace tries to cover her laughter with an extremely fake cough. Debbie frowns and looks to Foggy for guidance. "It's a blind joke," Foggy explains to her. "It's a thing. Beware, though, usually they get worse."

"The first time we met, he asked me whom I was looking for," Matt supplies helpfully, because he's such a nice guy. "It kind of went downhill from there."

Well, at least he doesn't tell Debbie that the first time they met, Foggy accidentally flirted with him. Although there's no telling which one of these facts is more embarrassing in retrospect.

"Awkward first meetings are his specialty," Debbie says. She sounds fond and her gaze _is_ when she looks at him. Foggy looks at her pleadingly, hoping to telepathically convince her not to share that particular story. "We met because of a zebra balloon. Raza was giving them out, there was one zebra balloon and I wanted it. Foggy did too and we fought over it. I almost scratched his eyes out, he pulled my out half of my hair, someone accidentally popped the balloon and that was the beginning of a year-long feud."

Matt bursts out laughing and even Candace — who's heard this story a million times — giggles like a maniac. Foggy groans and hides his face in his hands. At least Debbie had the good sense to tell the redacted version of events.

"How old were you when you met?" Matt asks, still snickering. Traitor.

"Thirteen," Foggy says, his voice muffled coming from behind his hands.

"He was thirteen, I was already fourteen," Debbie corrects him. "I'm seven months older."

"You've known each other seventeen years," Matt states rather than asks. Foggy drops his hands and looks at him. There's something in Matt's voice, a kind of wonder that Foggy doesn't like the sound of.

"We haven't spoken in the last five, so I don't think they count," Foggy tells him.

Debbie clicks her tongue. "Doesn't mean I wasn't interested in your well-being," she says. "Franklin Nelson, Esquire, of Nelson and Murdock, who got Wilson Fisk into FBI custody and most likely will put him behind bars." She smiles. "Couldn't help but learn all this, your local fame reached even California."

He can't even deny being interested in her in return, because while Debbie might not realise that, Matt would know that to be a big fat lie. He knew about the things she was up to in the past five years. Sometimes, when it was late at night and he was drunk in the sad way and had lost all self-respect, he booted up his laptop and googled her name, and read all about her achievements and awards, and looked at her picture on the Kruma Harris website.

"I'm glad that you came," is what Foggy tells her, because it's not creepy like admitting to keeping tabs on his ex-girlfriend (his ex-everything, she was so much more than a girlfriend) and has the benefit of being the absolute truth. 

He is glad. And he missed her. Oh, God, how he missed her.

***

The Quads leave around 8:20 pm, because they're not legally allowed to drink yet and it's getting annoying, spending time in a popular bar where everyone around them just keeps refilling their glasses. With the college kids gone, the noise level goes down a bit and it's possible to turn the music on, which someone sitting by the bar promptly does.

Foggy is happy to note that apparently no one updated the Inn's playlists since 2008. That, or the person who turned the music on is a big fan of 2008 hits.

Rihanna's "Please Don't Stop the Music" is blasting from the Inn's great speakers system, following not two but _three_ consecutive Taylor Swift songs, when Debbie gets back from the bar with an appletini for Foggy and a margaritas for herself and Matt. It's slightly worrying that she and Matt have found a common ground so fast, at least when it comes to drinks; it makes Foggy wonder what other things they might agree on and then it makes him breath a sigh of relief when he remembers that Debbie lives on the exact opposite side of the country from them and any further interactions between her and Matt are unlikely. What's more worrying right now, however, is Debbie's self-satisfied little smile that's playing on her lips. Oh. _Oh._ She turned the music on. She chose the 2008 Hits playlist.

2008 was their last good year. Is it a sign? Is it a jab? Or maybe she just likes these songs?

She hands Matt his margarita. "There you go. Fog," she hands him his appletini. "I hate you both, by the way, for making me drink. I was going to drive and now I won't."

"Where are you staying?" Foggy asks. There are a few nice hotels in the town, and the Princeton Taxicab HQ was just half a mile down the road, they'd get to the Inn in no time.

Debbie fiddles with the slice of lime on her glass. "Your mother said I could sleep at your place," she says. "Candace offered me her bed."

"My mother said what?"

Great. They'd have to have words about keeping him out of the loop with regards to inviting his almost fiancée over. The fact that it wasn't solely Cande's idea, that Mum was neck-deep, was strange. What was that, a conspiracy? Did they hope that — seeing each other after five years of silence — he and Debbie would instantly get back together? What was this, a plot of a dumb romantic comedy of the kind that Dad liked? Mum's never been fond of Debs when they were together, so what was with this change of heart?

He hated his family sometimes. A bunch of meddling know-it-alls.

Debbie shrugs and puts the lime between her teeth, sucks on it. 

"Guys," Candace says suddenly.

"What?" Foggy asks tiredly. Candace points upwards. Foggy glances at the ceiling. "There's nothing there."

"No, I mean," Candace points to the ceiling again. " _Listen._ "

Foggy does. He closes his eyes and listens to the song currently playing, what, it's yet another 2008 hit, it's nothing he hasn't heard before, it's-- _Oh._

"It's your song," Candace says triumphantly.

She has the benefit of not being wrong. "It is," Foggy admits. "So?"

"So?" Candace points between him and Debbie with a grin. "You have to dance!"

Foggy pinches the bridge of his nose. "No, we don't."

"Yes, you do!" Candace insists. "It's your song! When you hear your song in a bar, you have to dance, that's a rule. I'm not making this up. Matt, support me here."

"I don't know the rules of this place," Matt says, straight-faced, but Foggy can see his nostrils flaring with the effort it takes not to laugh, "but it does sound reasonable."

"See?" Candace gestures towards the centre of the room, where two couples are already swaying in a bad attempt at the penguin dance. "Matt agrees. You have to dance! Dance it out, losers!"

Foggy rolls his eyes. But next to him Debbie slides her chair back and stands up, and extends her hand towards him. "Come on," she says, wiggling her fingers. "You heard the judges. It's our song, we have to dance, those are the rules. Who are we to argue with the rules."

"I've been coming here since I was fifteen and I don't remember this rule," Foggy grumbles, but takes Debbie's hand and stands up.

They move away from the tables and to the part of the room where those two couples are still swaying out of rhythm. Debbie places her left hand on his shoulder and Foggy put his right on her back, and she slips her free hand into his. He glances at her and finds her looking, searching his face for an indication of _something_. He doesn't know if she finds it, but she smiles and gives him the smallest, almost imperceptible, nod. He steps forward and she moves back, letting him lead, falling back into the familiar box pattern with ease. 

"Is it just me or is this song way more depressing than I remember?" he murmurs.

Left foot forward, right foot side, left close, right back, left side, right close, and repeat.

"Depends on how you interpret the lyrics," Debbie replies.

They move like that for a moment, just a few steps dancing out the pattern; but then Foggy puts his foot between hers and angles them slightly to the left. And she gets it, of course, even with five years between them they still have had almost ten years of practice, she'll recognise the move. 

Debbie's hand slides off his shoulder and she stretches her arm, angles it as if she was holding the rim of a ballgown; she tilts her head to the left and closes her eyes and lets herself flow. Foggy leads her in a proper left box turn, but they don't stop once done. Foggy lets his left hand fall to his side; he steps closer to Debbie and wraps the right arm around her waist and they swirl in place, and the bar around them disappears in a blur of colours.

On the third swirl he raises his left hand again, splayed open, and she notices that too, slips her right hand into his and he grasps it, and he turns her underarm, steps forward and side to meet her in the exact same position they started in just as the song draws to a close.

The room erupts in applause and Foggy blinks. He didn't even notice that the Inn's usual chatter got quieter and that at least half of the customers were watching them. Foggy drops Debbie's hand as if burnt and murmurs an apology. He takes a step back, giving Debbie space; she runs a hand over the front of her dress and when she looks up at him, she's smiling.

"Glad to know we still have it in us," she says, and he smiles back.

Candace is grinning wide when they get back to their table. Matt's face, on the other hand, is devoid of even a ghost of emotion. "That was _awesome_ ," Candace says. She drums her hands on the table. "You know what it reminded me of? Mum and dad's thirtieth anniversary. You guys rocked the dance floor then." She turns her head to Matt. "They were voted the best couple of the party."

They did and they were. Grandfather Nelson cheered on them and called Debbie a treasure. He never quite forgave Foggy for the breakup. "And six months later we broke up."

Debbie looks away and Candace looks put off, but it's Matt who speaks. "Why did you break up?"

Foggy grits his teeth, and Debbie purses her lips. Oh, no. No, nope, they're not going there. Not now, not here.

"Foggy," Debbie says slowly, carefully choosing words, "has commitment issues."

"I don't have--" Foggy starts saying immediately, but stops. You know what, fine. Whatever. Let's go with that. It wasn't true and she knew it, she knew _why_ , but _fine_ , let her have this.

It is easier to explain than the whole truth.

***

They leave Debbie's rented car in front of the Inn and take a cab home, what with them ranging from very tipsy to stone-cold sober, in Candace's case, but possessing no driver's license. Debbie takes the shotgun seat while Foggy and Matt take the backseat, with Candace sandwiched between them because she's the most petite of them all.

It's pitch black outside when they get home, it must be after ten then, maybe closer to eleven, even. Matt and Foggy stumble out of the car, giggling, because the taxi driver has been telling them a story on the way here and that story was _hilarious_. Debbie exits gracefully, because she does everything with grace, her movements are always fluid and elegant, even blackout drunk she would never stumble. She moves a lot like Matt, actually, when he's not drunk, when he's in a place he knows and in the presence of the people he trusts. He moves gracefully then, his sense of balance top-notch, like a person who knows perfectly well what their body is capable of.

Candace pays the taxi driver while Foggy fumbles with his keys and _finally_ gets the front door opened. The four of them walk inside, and Foggy closes the door behind them. "We're home!"

"Hey, kids," Ned greets them.

He's sitting on the couch in the living room, one arm slung over the backrest of it, with Mum pressed close to his side. Foggy makes a sad face. They used to do that a lot, Debbie and he, when they were in high school; they just sat on his parents' couch, or the one at Debbie's dad's house, and watched whatever dumb film was on TV. Debbie loved the SciFi Channel's original movies, so it was often that.

Anna turns her head to look at the four-people party standing in her hallway. "You need anything?" She smiles when her eyes settle on Debbie. "Hello, love. We've put up an extra mattress in Candace's room for you, Debbie."

"We're fine, mum."

"Thank you, Anna."

Anna waves a hand at them. "Off with you. Candace, you have the final rehearsal tomorrow at half past nine. As for the rest of you," she gives them a stern glance, "please sleep it off. I don't want you looking hungover in the graduation photos."

"Sure thing, mum."

"Goodnight, Mrs. Nelson, Mr. Nelson."

"Ned!" Foggy's dad yells after their retreating backs.

Foggy decides to fuck it, fuck it all, especially the hushed argument about who was getting first to the main bathroom — Debbie and Candace, arguing over the bathtub, Matt didn't care either way and smartly occupied the downstairs bathroom where the shower was — and goes straight to his room, where he collapses onto his bed with a groan. He isn't drunk, per se, so the threat of a hangover isn't looming on the horizon. Actually, he is starting to feel oddly sober, which should tip him off to the fact that he might be drunker than he thought initially.

He doesn't know how long he's lying vertical on his bed, fully clothed. He hears the door to Candace's room close behind Debbie — she lost the bathtub argument and had to wait — and he hears his parents turn off the TV and come upstairs, both laughing under their breaths. Must have been a good film, then.

Eh, fuck it again.

Foggy raises himself on his arms and slides off the bed, landing on the floor in an undignified heap. He manages to hoist himself up and he stretches, groaning, because he is getting too old for this. He runs a hand over his eyes, trying to chase the sleep away. He yawns as he gets to his door, yanks it open and steps outside. He pads downstairs, but in the quiet of the house even his light footfalls seem impossibly loud.

He makes his way to the kitchen, where he opens the fridge and rummages through it in search of his favourite fruit. Ah. There it is. A bottle mum opened on Sunday and they didn't finish, even between them four drinking people. Foggy grabs the bottle and closes the fridge door, takes two mugs off the kitchen counter and heads back upstairs.

Both his hands are occupied, so he kicks on Matt's door instead of knocking. "Matt?" he asks softly and presses an ear to the door. No reply. He presses the door handle with his elbow and gets the door open, walks inside. It's dark inside, but that's hardly a surprise. "Matt? You awake?"

"I am now," comes the amused answer from the direction of the bed.

Foggy grins and kicks the door closed. "I brought wine." He hears a rustle the sheets make when Matt sits up on the bed. Foggy pads over to it and almost trips on something small and fluffy that gives out a whine. "Fucking hell!"

Matt laughs and reaches out to turn on the bedside table lamp. The sudden brightness blinds Foggy, and when he blinks it away, he sees Matt sitting cross-legged on the bed, arms full of brownish-grayish-black fur. "Dude," Foggy says, pointing the wine bottle at Matt, "did you steal my parents' dog?"

"I didn't," Matt says, stroking Deuce's head. "Technically. He came here after me. Therefore I cannot be held liable if tomorrow he accidentally gets into my bag."

"You're totally stealing my parents' dog," Foggy breathes, finding it hilarious, for some reason. "You don't even _want_ to have a dog."

Deuce pushes himself up on his front paws and cranes his neck to lick Matt's chin. "I can't really remember why." He extends his free hand and Foggy passes him one of the mugs, murmuring, "Handle on the left."

Foggy seats himself on the bed with his back to the wall, pops the cork open and fills their mugs with wine. He drinks his in three big gulps and refills, while Matt takes his time sipping on it. "Not that I don't appreciate you barging into my room in the middle of the night with the intent to get me drunk," Matt says, his mouth curving in a half-smile, "but why are you here?"

"I didn't barge in," Foggy protests. "I knocked."

"Knocked."

"Kicked on the door, fine, but my hands were otherwise occupied."

"And did you hear me invite you in?" Matt asks.

Well. "No."

Matt hums in response. He drinks his wine and bends to put the mug on the floor. Foggy hopes it's empty and nothing will spill in the event of them accidentally knocking it over. Dad would be pissed about the stain that would no doubt stay behind.

Deuce yawns and settles comfortably in Matt's lap. He makes a content noise — shit, _shit_ he's _purring_ , what the fuck — when Matt runs a hand across his back. "What's wrong, Foggy?" Matt asks in a low, concerned voice.

Foggy shrugs. "Nothing," he says. "Just--Debbie."

Matt makes a sympathetic noise and nods. And isn't it funny, the sudden reversal of their roles; Foggy has spent many a night drinking with Matt in law school because _Elektra_. There didn't even have to be a concrete reason; it was just _her_. "You love her," Matt murmurs.

"I loved her."

Matt shakes his head. "No, you still love her. Your heart skipped when you saw her and it's been beating at a slightly faster rate all evening, but especially when you were dancing. It _was_ amazing, by the way, couldn't say that with Candace there, but..." Matt trails off. "Yeah. You're a great dancer."

Foggy lets out a short laugh. "That much you've already known, buddy. I told you I was good."

"I didn't know you were that good."

"Not sure if that's a compliment or if I should feel offended." Foggy squints. "Also. Did you listen to my heartbeat in a bar full of people? Like, _my_ heartbeat? What the fuck."

Matt's cheeks flush red and he moves his hand to pick on the sheet. Deuce makes an unhappy little noise at the loss of his scratches provider. "My hearing, it's--sensitive. A maelstrom of sounds that I can use as information, but a maelstrom nevertheless. Often it's just _too much_. It's exhausting to have to sort through all of that, and impossible to do in the long run. Most of the time I block it all, try to turn all the non-essential things into background noise. But to do that," Matt stops. His tongue darts out to wet his lips. "Filters. I have to focus on something. Sometimes it's something specific that I need to overhear or do or learn. Most of the time it's, it's you. I know you. I know the sound of your heartbeat. It's easy to focus on that. It's easier to focus on familiar things. They're a comfort, in a way."

"Is this why you'd fall asleep on me so often in law school?" Foggy asks and watches Matt's cheeks get even redder. "Because my heartbeat what, lulled you to sleep? Is that a thing? Can it do that? Can I do that?"

Matt bites down on his lips and reluctantly inclines his head. "Yes. I'm sorry."

A few months ago, Foggy would have got angry. Listening to someone's heartbeat seemed creepy then — it still was creepy, alright, it'd always be — but now he's had a lot of time to think about it. He had the time to go over Matt's not that great explanations, put them together with the way Matt acted, with his particular quirks and habits, some choices he's made — and he came up with a put-together and much more rounded picture of who Matt Murdock was.

"Don't be," Foggy tells him. "I'm glad I could help you, even if by virtue of being alive. You weren't getting enough sleep, buddy."

He still isn't, but that's a topic for another time.

"I like the sound of your heart." Matt whispers it as if it was a dirty secret.

Oh, Matt. "I suppose you could recognise it anywhere?" Matt nods. "Great. You have my permission to listen to my heartbeat whenever you like, then. It'll come in handy when I inevitably get kidnapped by bad guys or a particularly pissed off client."

" _Foggy_ ," Matt whines.

"Joking!" Foggy puts his hands up defensively. "Only not really."

"It's not funny."

Foggy sighs. "I know."

He refills his mug again and tips the bottle towards Matt, who declines with a single shake of his head. Foggy downs the contents of his mug and refills _again_ , because really, fuck this, Cande's graduation starts at 5:30 pm, he is allowed to sleep in and sleep out his hangover.

Matt bows his head. Foggy can see the curve of his smile. "Commitment issues?" he asks. "Marci used to say the same thing. Should I be worried?"

"Don't listen to those crazy women, Matt, I don't have commitment issues," Foggy assures him. "If I had, I would have never fallen into debt with you. Or into crime, potentially, even as an accessory. Because that, that's commitment."

"For better or worse."

Foggy's voice gets softer. "Of course. _Always_."

Matt turns his head towards Foggy. In the crappy artificial light of the little lamp his hair does look auburn, red almost, and his eyes look black. "What happened between the two of you?" he asks. Foggy sucks in a breath, that's not something he's dying to talk about. "I know you still have feelings for her. And I know she has feelings for you, but you were both so tense and on edge the whole evening..."

"Debbie's not just my high school sweetheart," he tells Matt, who hums curiously. "True, we started dating in high school. But then..." Oh, fuck it. "We were together for nine years, Matt. Half of high school. All through her college years, all through _my_ college years, and all the years in between."

Matt doesn't gape, exactly, but Foggy knows he's surprised by that information, he can see that in the set of Matt's shoulders. "Why did you break up?"

"Lots of reasons. She was in grad school at Berkeley while I was doing undergrad at Columbia. Our relationship has been a long distance one for over six years and neither of us was good at handling it. I was supposed to apply to Berkeley Law School, to move to her to the West Coast, but I didn't. I applied to Columbia instead. But ultimately everything boiled down to the fact that she wanted to get married and I--didn't."

"Didn't want to get married to her?"

"Didn't want to get married _period_. I still don't." For a lot of reasons, most of which he doesn't want to tell Matt about. "It's just--Marriage is not for me."

Matt's quiet for a moment, and then, "I want to get married."

Foggy snorts. "That much I know. Marriage is a sacrament, gotta catch 'em all, yadda yadda. It's a Catholic thing."

"It's not only that," Matt says, quiet but determined. "It's hard work. It's difficult. People change. Sometimes you end up with someone different from the person you married. But if it's the right person, it's worth it. All that hard work, because you get to fall in love with them all over again. If it's the right person, it doesn't matter how much they change — they're still going to be the right person."

"Someone here has thought a lot about it."

"I have," Matt admits, his wistful tone raising a major red flag for Foggy. Matt introspective was--not the best thing. Or the easiest to handle. Or the safest, usually for Matt himself.

Foggy winces. Please don't let this be about The One Who Shall Not Be Named, please don't let this be about her, God, _please_ don't let this be about, "Elektra?" he risks.

Matt shrugs. "I used to think she was the right person."

God fucking damnit.

"I used to think Debbie was the right person, too," he says, because he can offer that much. The most serious relationships either of them ever had, both crashed and burned and just--Poof and kaboom. He also says it because it's true. He did think that. He used to think Debs was the love of his life.

He used to think a lot of things.

"You still love her."

Foggy rolls his eyes. "Come on, it's been over five years. I know when to take a hint and move on. I'm not in love with her."

Matt smiles crookedly. "I didn't say that."

Matt's a lot of work. _God_ he's a lot of work. "Fine. Maybe I do love her," he says. "Maybe I always will, or a part of me always will. You know? She was my first love, Matt, it's not something you can forget. It's not something you just get over. Your first love, that's the kind of shit that stays with you."

"Hmm," Matt hums. He closes his eyes and puts his hand over Deuce's nose, lets the puppy burrow into his palm. "We should go to sleep. Your mother will kill us if we end up looking like zombies in your sister's graduation photos."

"Mum's scary," Foggy agrees. He yawns. "Help. Can't get up. Can't be bothered to go to my room. Matt, I might have drunk too much."

Matt laughs at him and leans over to pluck the mug and the empty bottle from his grasp. He deposits both on the bedside table, and he picks up his mug and puts it there too, out of the way. Then he lifts Deuce up and places him on the floor, and ends up patting Foggy's shin. "If you're not going to go to your own bed, here's a perfectly good floor," he says, pointing at said floor.

"I will take the floor, just watch me."

"Can't. Blind."

Foggy would flip him off, but can't. His sense of equilibrium must be fucked, because he topples to the floor, where he decides to stay. It is a perfectly good floor.

Matt drops a small pillow and one sheet onto him. "Night, Foggy."

Foggy feels Deuce settle next to him, as if seeking warmth. Which is weird, because as a dog he's much warmer than Foggy as a default. "Night, Matt."

***

"What's so difficult about love, anyway?" Foggy muses on the verge of sleep. "It's just work, and that's just force, applied over a distance. It isn't difficult at all."

***

It's way too early and definitely too bright when angry knocking wakes Foggy up. He cracks one eye open and immediately regrets it, because ouch, shit, fuck, damn. He tries to pull his pillow over his head, then realises that the pillow he's resting his head on is a) way too small to be his, he's a fan of those giant fluffy things in which you could drown, and b) currently half occupied by a ball of brownish-grayish-black fur that somehow, during the night, migrated from its spot on the floor to Foggy's. Spot on the floor. Because he is lying on the floor.

Why is he lying on the floor? It didn't even feel like his own floor, his floor had a carpet thrown on it. His floor was nice and comfy and warm, this floor was bare and hard and cold, and he didn't like it in the least.

What's the deal with the floor?

The angry knocking comes back with doubled force and Foggy moans. "I swear to God, Franklin," Anna hisses through the door, her voice dripping with malice and filled with poisonous snakes and booby traps and all kinds of awful things Foggy doesn't want to think about at the moment, "if you're not up in the next ten minutes, I'll kill you. You know I can. It's almost one, get you shit together, son."

Foggy moans some more.

"She's not lying, you know," Matt comments cheerfully and way too loud, because deep down he is an asshole and Foggy should have never befriended him. "About either killing you or having the ability to kill you."

"Newsflash, Matt," Foggy grits out, "I've known her for thirty years. I've managed to realise that on my own, thanks."

"At least you've gained coherency." A tiny _thud_ tells Foggy that Matt closed something. A book, most likely, Braille books have magically appeared on the shelves of the Nelson household over the last few years. Foggy's parents never breathed a word about them — choosing them, buying them, anything — and Matt never said anything either. It was like a pact: no one says anything, but everyone accepts the fact that the books are here at face value. They just are, end of story.

"I wasn't coherent before?"

"Your mum came to wake us up after ten. She was surprised to find you on the floor here instead of the bed in your room." Foggy raises his head — ouch, ouch, spins, bad idea — and glances at Matt. Who's smiling. Who looks well-rested and not hungover and miserable, the bastard. "You mumbled something neither of us could understand and went back to sleep."

Perfect. Foggy's head drops back onto the pillow, startling Deuce, who cranes his neck and sniffs Foggy's hair curiously. "Perfect."

Matt hums in agreement. He gets to his knees on the bed and bends, extending one hand and snapping his fingers to get the puppy's attention. Deuce stops sniffing Foggy's hair and goes to inspect Matt's hand, an opportunity Matt uses to pick him up and bring him onto the bed. If Foggy's parents are hoping to teach the dog that jumping onto furniture is bad and that beds are off-limits, good luck with that. Matt is going to ruin all the puppy training, because he's fallen helplessly in love with this fluffy nightmare.

It makes Foggy think that all of Matt's previous insistence that he doesn't like dogs and doesn't want a dog has been due to the fact that Matt didn't actually know any dogs.

"You're not gonna steal my parents' dog," Foggy warns him.

Deuce drags his tongue all over Matt's forearm. "I don't want your parents' dog."

"I can't hear your heartbeat, Matt. Are you lying? I think you're lying."

That makes Matt laugh. "No, really. Having your own pet is _effort_. Having someone else's pet? Awesome. You get to do the fun things without having to take care of the mundane stuff."

"Pay-per-pet, you mean?"

What happens next to the door is not so much a knock as it is an assault, that ends with the door being yanked open and Foggy almost jumping out of his skin. "It's been fifteen minutes, Franklin," his mother seethes, "do kindly get up. I don't care about your hangover, there's shit to be done. Jagoda is having life problems, as usual, Bill got lost on his way, in four hours you need to look like an actual human being." She glares first at the bottle of wine that Foggy's brought from the kitchen, then at the two mugs that Matt has put away before they went to sleep, and finally at Matt. "And, really, Matt? Franklin I get, but you I could have accused of having a bit more common sense."

She closes the door behind her and Foggy can hear Matt gulp. Whoa, harsh, Mum. That's the sternest she's ever been with Matt. "Sorry," Foggy says, sheepish. "I got you into the Anna Nelson Disapproval Crossfire."

Matt shrugs one shoulder. Except for a faint hint of pink embarrassment on his cheeks he doesn't seem too deterred by Anna's cold shoulder. "Brought this on myself. I did promise to make sure you got up before noon."

"When did you promise that?"

"Breakfast. Nine-ish. Candace came here in the morning, wanted one last opinion on the final version of her speech."

"She managed to write it?" Foggy pushes himself up to a sitting position. Spins, ouch, fuck. He props himself against the frame of Matt's bed. Staying on the floor seems like a great idea for now. "I might have to start admiring her."

Matt nudges his shoulder with his foot. Foggy assumes it means something like 'cut the bullshit'. "You already admire her. She's your sister."

Foggy resists the urge to tickle Matt. He'll already look like a zombie in Cande's pictures, he doesn't fancy getting kicked and sporting a black eye as well. "Please don't tell her that, her ego is big enough as it is."

"Deal."

"Tell me, is she quoting anyone boring and dead? I need to be prepared so that I can boo her appropriately."

"She is quoting someone, but I don't think they're dead. Jim Andrews?"

Foggy half-turns to look at Matt. "You're joking. Please tell me you're joking."

Matt shakes his head 'no'. "I assume you know a Jim Andrews?"

Foggy rests his forehead on the edge of Matt's bed and sighs. Deuce — intrigued by the sound, most likely — gets out of Matt's arms and comes sniffing. So it's back to sniffing hair. Oh, no, wait. Great. Now he's _licking_ Foggy's hair. Mum and Dad should file a complaint against faulty goods, because there was definitely something wrong with this dog.

"I know a Jim Andrews," Foggy admits. "He was the speaker at my graduation. A complete and utter asshole. His mother was the department chair of the Department of Classics at the university, he thought it made him so much better than the rest of us."

"Then who chose him?"

"He had a close circle of fans." Foggy shrugs. "His mother was almost never home, he used to hold parties that some of the people from his mother's department would sneak alcohol into. That made him popular."

"And Candace is quoting him in her speech." Matt grabs the puppy's tail and pulls, thus distracting it from washing Foggy's hair with spit. God, he should get a shower. "You know, the quote is nice."

"Yeah, his graduation speech was good," Foggy says. "It only made me detest him more, actually."

The next person to knock on the door does it quietly and is respectful of the hangover people inside who are sporting killer headaches. Matt invites them and Dad sticks his head inside, and grins when he notices Foggy on the floor. At least he's no longer in a horizontal position and looks a bit more dignified.

"You're up," Ned says, still smiling. He gets inside the room, not bothering to close the door behind. He's holding a mug full of steaming _something_ and is balancing a plate full of toasts on his wrist, God bless Dad's waiter-like ability to carry multiple things at the same time. "I've brought you something to eat. You missed breakfast."

"So I've been told."

Foggy takes the plate and Ned puts the mug on the bedside table. He grabs the two Matt and Foggy used last night and then puts the bottle under his arm, for good measure. Oh, Dad, why, cleaning after your thirty-year-old son is embarrassing for all parties involved. "Toasts, they won't make you puke. Drink the tea while it's warm. When you're done, get dressed and get downstairs."

"Thanks, dad." Ned's smile is warm and fond when he reaches with his free hand to ruffle Foggy's hair. Only he doesn't, he pulls back and his smile turns to confused disgust. He wipes the hand on his trousers. "Yeah, that's your dog, the hair licking expert."

"Elyse will find common ground with him, then."

Foggy snorts. Oh yes, let's make fun of the hairdresser cousin. Ned winks at them and leaves the room, closing the door behind him. Foggy takes the plate, grabs one toast and shoves it between his teeth, offers the rest to Matt. Matt declines. Great, more for Foggy.

"What's the tea?" Foggy asks and somehow makes it understandable through all that toast in his mouth.

"Drink it and find out."

"Nah." Foggy waves a toast in the mug's general direction. "'s way too hot. Sniff it and tell me."

" _Sniff it_?" Matt asks and makes those two words sound mock-outraged. "I'm not a dog, Foggy."

"I know," Foggy agrees. "We have a real dog here, actually, and he's not trained to sniff my tea. And even if he were, he wouldn't exactly be in a position to tell me what kind of tea this is."

Matt huffs out a laugh, but a second later Foggy does hear him inhale slowly. "Black currant," he tells Foggy, "with honey."

"Damn, it's crazy that you know it."

"I could probably tell you the manufacturer and the country of origin, but as you said, it's too hot to drink."

Foggy puts his plate down and turns to look at Matt again. "You could?"

Matt rolls his eyes. "No, Foggy. For one, I haven't drunk every company's black currant tea to even have a frame of reference. I don't even like black currant. Two, it's impossible to pinpoint the exact location unless you've been there and, I don't know, licked the dirt or something."

"Licked the dirt."

"Stick loved to play those little games. 'Milk from three different dairies', 'tangerines from southeast of Argentina'. He made that stuff up to intimidate you. To make you think you weren't as good as him."

"What an asshole." Matt's nostrils flare. Go on, laugh. Laugh. "But you're better than him, right?"

"I am at some things. My hearing's much, much better, for example."

Foggy raises his fist, fully expecting it to be bumped. "You go, Matt, four for you, Matt." Matt only frowns. "What? You haven't seen _Mean Girls_?"

"I haven't been really keeping up with the cinema hits for some reason."

Foggy closes his eyes. God, Jesus, whoever on Matt's endless list of saintly people, someone give him strength to endure Matt's terrible sense of humour. "You know what I mean. We've seen _Mean Girls_. Don't tell me we haven't."

"We haven't seen _Mean Girls_."

"What else? Next time you'll tell me we haven't seen _Legally Blonde_ either."

"We haven't--"

"Okay, stop." Foggy puts his hand up, palm open. "Stop. Matt. I have failed you as a friend. We shall rectify my mistake the moment we get back to New York. You, me, weekend, TV. There'll be popcorn. I will turn you popculture savvy, Murdock, you'll--Mhm."

He stops himself a word short. No. No, he can't say that. That's an opening, one Matt would no doubt use. Foggy can see him laughing under his breath at the fact that Foggy stopped out of fear of yet another dumb joke. They need to upgrade their repertoire.

Foggy is about to say that when his mother, most likely from the living room, yells, "FRANKLIN PHILLIP NELSON, GET YOUR BUTT OUT OF MATT'S BEDROOM THIS INSTANT!"

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I admit to having taken some liberties in this fic. The Princeton High School graduation 2015 didn't take place outside, but in the gymnasium and it was due to a weather-related warning. That, however, messed with my plan for Candace's graduation scenery and I've decided to change that detail. This fic now officially takes place in the AU where weather in Princeton, NJ at the end of June 2015 was good enough to host an event outside.
> 
> I would also like to apologise to Mr. Harrison Bronfeld, class of 2015 speaker for future. I'm sorry that I had to give your important role to a fictional character. As far as I know - and I don't - Mr. Bronfeld is not as much of a troll as Cande is. I omitted him from Princeton HS history for the purposes of plot and I believe I should mention that. Being a speaker is an achievement, after all. (In fact, I did the same to Mr. Jacob Middlekauff, speaker for achievement, in the next chapter.)
> 
> [Foggy and Debbie's song is 'Run' by Leona Lewis.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqpAgMxhx30)
> 
> The [Palladio Awards](http://www.palladioawards.com) are architectural awards given annually for excellence in traditional design.
> 
> Princeton's [Ivy Inn](http://ivyinnprinceton.com/) did have a craft beer night on the 20th of June 2015.


	3. Chapter 3

The weather is the best surprise of the day. The forecasts were undecided and ranged from a heat alert and a general warning to the possibility of heavy rain. Foggy's glad that it's neither, as both ends of the spectrum would have resulted in the graduation ceremony having to be moved to the gymnasium. It would have been awful, in any case; the gymnasium's air conditioning has always been shit and had not improved since Foggy left the school, the auditorium would have been sweltering and people would turn their programs into makeshift fans instead of reading them like they ought to.

So, bless the weather, which allowed the event to take place outdoors. This year's venue looks amazing, too, with the scene built in the middle of the square opposite the school building, between Houghton Road, Moore Street and Franklin Avenue (the last one still cracks Foggy up and it's been sixteen years). The audience is set up so that everyone is sitting with their back towards the school, only the people on stage — when walking there to get their diploma, when looking to the audience and seeing their friends, their family — can see the school whose halls they're leaving behind.

Hopefully forever, unless someone becomes a teacher and will desperately want to come and teach here. Which could happen.

They get to the square with thirty minutes to spare and yet the whole place is already full of family members and crawling with seniors in blue caps and gowns. There are a few familiar faces among the families — there are two or three people Foggy's fairly certain were in the same year he was, and at least seven that he remembers seeing around school when he was still a student there.

Debbie waves at him from the second row and points to a couple of seats on her left that have various items placed on them, all in an attempt to communicate that these seats were taken. Great thinking on Debbie's part, that, because even without Aunt Jagoda— that was the information has set Mum off earlier, she went ballistic on Aunt Jagoda over the phone, yelling _why didn't you tell me that before_ and just barely managing not to curse her to hell and back — one whole row was now occupied by family and friends of one Candace Nelson. Debbie is there, of course, and Uncle William and cousins Bill and Elyse, who managed to find her way after all and came sans Aunt Jagoda, and let's be real, everyone breathed a sigh of relief at hearing _that_ ; Grandfather Nelson next to Grams next to Bess Mahoney. Brett must be here somewhere too, then, roaming the grounds.

His parents get caught up talking with parents of other seniors — judging by the husband's hooked nose he's the father of Cody from _The Tower_ — so Foggy offers Matt his arm and leads him to where Debbie and representatives of the Nelson clan are sitting. There are over 360 seniors here today, a vast majority brought at least three family members to cheer on them. Add to that the entire faculty and even a few students from lower grades who came to see their friends graduate, and you are easily looking at 1600 people crammed here. He wonders how Matt's doing, with so many people in such a small space. He should ask. Or maybe he shouldn't, not now. Matt won't answer him here, anyway, what with it being a secret and all.

Secret, Foggy. You are good at keeping secrets.

"Cousin Franklin," Elyse says. She gets up from her seat and throws her arms around Foggy's neck, effectively trapping him in a hug. For someone much smaller than him, both in height and in weight, she's surprisingly strong. 

Hairdressing is a hard work. Plus she works out, instead of just joking about it the way Foggy does.

"Cousin Elyse," he greets her, patting her back. "Pat, pat. There, that's enough, we've filled the hugging quota for the next five years."

She laughs, runs her fingers through Foggy's her. "Your hair's dry. What have you been doing to it? Have I not taught you well?"

He bats her hand away. "You have taught me well. I heed all your advice."

"Pureology, Foggy."

"I am not made of money, El. At this point in our lives I am pretty sure I earn less than you do." He glances at Matt, who went to say 'hi' to Grams and Bess. "Plus, I have a best friend with a very sensitive nose. I can't use anything that will make him sneeze. It's not worth it."

"El burro sabe mas que tu," Elyse murmurs, shaking her head.

"I have no idea what you just said."

"Should have taken Spanish like I told you to," she says. She tugs at the ends of his hair. "Try Beecology, honey and botanical one. It's cheaper than Pureology, but just as effective."

"You're the best." Elyse grins. "Good talk, El, same time in five years?

"Aw, we'll see each other much sooner," she says, patting him on the arm.

Strange. That's not how it usually goes. Last time they've seen each other was at Foggy and Matt's law school graduation. Before that it was her thirtieth birthday, three--no, four years prior to that. Damn, he was there with Debbie. "We will?"

She covers her mouth with her hand, hiding a gasp. "You don't know yet!" She points her thumb in the direction of Uncle William and Bill. "Ask Bill. He'll fill you in."

He would ask Bill, but Grandfather Nelson intercepts him on the way. "Frankie!"

Foggy rolls his eyes. While 'Frankie' is a name he doesn't like and he's told Grandfather Rod a million times to call him 'Foggy' instead, at least it's not 'Frannie'. It could be worse. It could always be worse. "Hey, granddad. You're looking good."

And he does look good, for an average eighty-something-year-old. But when one compared him to the likes of Grams or Ray, who at ninety didn't look a day over seventy, one realised that Grandfather Nelson looked _ancient_.

"Frankie, dear boy." Grandfather Nelson puts his hands on Foggy's cheeks and then kisses him on those cheeks. "Such a lovely day. It is a lovely day, isn't it?"

"Yes, granddad, it is."

"I saw Deborah here, with Elyse, just moments ago." Grandfather Rod turns and looks around as if to make sure he didn't imagine that. He beams when he spots Debbie, who moved chairs and is now sitting next to Bill. "See? There she is. I knew you two would get back together. It's such a lovely day for a wedding."

Aaand Grandfather Nelson also has his problems. "We're here for Candace's high school graduation, granddad."

"Oh?" Grandfather Rod lowers his gaze, confused. "But Deborah. You did get back together?"

"No, granddad, we didn't. Debbie is here as Candace's guest."

"Oh. Franklin," Grandfather's voice takes on a stern note, "you foolish boy. You shouldn't have ended things with that girl, she's a treasure..."

Foggy spies his parents over Grandfather's shoulder and puts on the most pleading face he's capable of. Please, Dad, come to the rescue. He must look truly pitiful, because Dad hastens to where Foggy and Grandfather are standing and puts a hand on Grandfather's arm. "Dad," Ned announces his presence, "there you are. We were looking for you."

"You were?"

"Mhm." Ned makes the tiniest move of his head, more his brows than his neck, actually, and Foggy takes it as the message it's intended to be. Clear out while he's distracted. "We did."

Foggy gets the hell away and towards the other end of the row, where Matt is sitting between Grams and Bess Mahoney and is listening to some story that Brett's telling. Foggy knows Brett, has known him since they were three years old. He knows how Brett tells stories and so he knows that Matt — even with his supersenses — is only getting about 70% of it. The rest of the content is Brett's wild facial expressions, sound effects and manic hand-waving. When Brett's telling a story, at least one of his listeners ends up hit in the face, not always on purpose.

"Hey there, gang," Foggy greets them.

"Hey yourself," Matt answers. "Brett's just been telling us about an interesting attempted arrest."

"Oh?"

"Right in your neighbourhood," Grams cuts in. "A block or two from where you live, Foggy. A woman stopped a car with her hand."

"What, she waved her hand and it stopped? Like the crap the Scarlet Witch from the Avengers can do?"

"No, she simply grabbed a bumper and held it back from driving away."

Foggy snorts. "No way. That's--that can't be real. And in Hell's Kitchen? I'm calling Bullshit Police, can you hear the sirens?"

"I was there, man," Brett insists. "I saw her. Petite, white, dark hair. And don't look so disbelieving, we do have the Daredevil."

If anyone bothered to look at Matt in that second, they would have noticed how interested in his shoes he suddenly became, not that he could see them or anything. But no one looked, thankfully, because Matt got so shifty no one would believe he had nothing to say or had no connections, blind or not.

"Exactly my point," Foggy says. "We already have a superhero." Matt's head snaps back up at the sound of that word. "What are the chances of there being two?"

Brett waves a hand. "You're killing my vibe here."

"I am very not sorry."

"Deborah is here," Bess says to fill the sudden silence. "Is there a chance you two got back together?"

"You're the second person to ask me that," Foggy sighs. "No, we're not back together and we're not planning on getting back together. That ship has sailed, Bess."

"Pity." Bess gets more comfortable in her seat. "I liked Debbie. Much more than Debbie Number Two. At least our Debbie was not a stone-cold harpy--"

"Marci is not a stone-cold harpy," Foggy interrupts Bess. It's one thing to joke that Marci lost her soul, it's entirely another to hear someone say mean things about her. Foggy dated Marci, so he's allowed, especially since Marci knows he doesn't mean it. Bess? She's met Marci once, in passing, and developed an immediate distaste. 

"Marci is Debbie Number Two?" Matt asks.

Brett gives a short laugh. "Yeah. Haven't you not--"

"Noticed? No, actually, I haven't noticed any similarities," Matt says, tone serious, but a small smile betraying his amusement. "Somehow they escaped me. Are there any?"

"They're both gorgeous and sharply dressed blue-eyed blondes," Brett says. "Honest to God, the first time I saw Marci, I thought it was Debbie. And I admit that I was happy. Mama and I were expecting wedding invitations from them and instead got news of the breakup, and then came you."

"That's so kind, Brett, thank you."

Brett shrugs. Bess pats his knee. "Franklin here has a type," she says, and her eyes twinkle with mirth. "It's all gorgeous blondes with him."

Foggy huffs, indignant. "Two is hardly a type."

"Orla Bowen from primary school."

"Hardly counts, we were nine, Brett!"

"What about Karen?" Bess asks suddenly, stunning everyone into silence. "Karen counts, right?"

"Karen?"

"A pretty young blonde that works with you," Bess explains. "Elena, bless her soul, told me about her. You two had a date, didn't you?"

Foggy's _feeling_ the heat in his face, if he could see his cheeks they'd probably be Matt-level of beetroot red. "Yeah, we, um, sort of, um, did."

Matt's brows disappear entirely behind his glasses. "You never said you went on a date with Karen. When was that?"

"It doesn't matter," Foggy says hurriedly, "it didn't end well, we never repeated that, end of story."

" _Foggy_."

"When the bombs went off in Hell's Kitchen," he tells Matt while trying to look anywhere but at him. "We were at Elena's, she made dinner for us. We all know how that ended, happy?"

Matt is... Oh, hell. Although to be expected. Matt is the exact opposite of happy and he's making that 'I'm feeling guilty' face that Foggy _hates_ because 99% of the time it's applied in the wrong circumstances and to things that are so beyond Matt's control that they exist in a different dimension, and it isn't even funny. However, when something _is_ Matt's fault — like eating the last crackers at the office, don't think Foggy doesn't know, he's on to you, Murdock — it fails to make an appearance.

And now Matt's feeling guilty, probably for not being there to protect Foggy and Karen from being blown up by Fisk's bombs, which in no way is his fault. Or maybe he's feeling guilty about not getting to the hospital as soon as possible, which isn't exactly fair, because he did. Once he was done with his crazy ninja stuff and _picked his damn phone up_ he was in the hospital in record time; when Foggy woke up, it was to Matt's crumpled form half-lying on his hospital bed, bent at an awkward angle that would no doubt have resulted in killer cricks in his neck.

They'll need to have a talk about Matt's misplaced sense of guilt. Again.

But first he needs to set the record straight. "Karen absolutely doesn't count."

Bess opens her mouth to say something, but the headmaster enters the stage and taps the microphone, so Foggy mouths 'later' at her and hurries to his own chair.

***

The headmaster keeps his welcome brief yet funny, which ends up being a stark contrast to the speech prepared by the class president. Foggy's not sure what James Donoghue did to convince the school to elect him, but he was sure the school now regretted it. Ten minutes in and the speech is only getting worse and worse. At this rate Candace's address will be amazing no matter how many boring lines by people dead or alive she's put in.

Foggy's happy to see that everyone, parents and teachers included, are very enthusiastic about clapping when class president James finishes talking. Next — apparently there is some order of importance here, after all — is the speaker for spirit. Least important, Foggy assumes. The speech itself is sweet, full of nice touches that Foggy cannot appreciate the way people living in Princeton day-in and day-out do, but even he finds the mental image of the students hiding water-mist fans under their clothes during exams hilarious.

Next one is the speaker for achievement. To Foggy's unending surprise it's Tom the Irredeemable Douchebag, who turns out to be one of the most decorated seniors this year. Not only a member of the Studio Band, but also of the Model UN and a teammate of the Science Olympiad school team. His speech is impassioned and uplifting and oozing school pride, and Foggy's finding it hard to dislike the kid at the moment. Oh, Tom. Why did you have to turn out to be a bigoted racist homophobe? And he nailed all three, what did that say about Cande's taste in men?

"Candace is next," Anna whispers, as if no one was aware of that fact and was not in the possession of the event program, where _Candace Nelson_ was written right after _speaker for future_.

Candace looks stunning in the Prussian blue of Princeton High, the colour looks much better on her than it ever did on Foggy. He strawberry blond hair falls from under her cap in soft waves — she must have done something to it, maybe that's why Elyse was already here when they arrived — and the cap itself is cocked to the side, kept from falling off her head by cleverly placed pins. A little joke. Foggy's was too, at his graduation.

"We shall go into the world bravely and surely, to change it and shape it in the name of ideals we discovered while in the halls of this school," is what Candace starts with. It's a good introduction, that much is true. A strong statement to catch the audience's attention. Matt's style. Foggy rolls his eyes. Ugh, _Cande_. "Those words were uttered by the valedictorian of the Class of 2003, Jim Andrews. I remember people clapping. I clapped as well, though didn't understand those words then. To be honest, I still don't, and I don't think Jim Andrews understood them either. He's currently serving fifteen years in prison for a sexual assault." 

Oh God.

_Oh. God._

"Please tell me _you_ didn't tell her that including that tidbit in her speech was a good idea," Foggy whispers to Matt.

"That wasn't in the draft she showed me," Matt hisses back.

A murmur raises in the audience while on the stage the headmaster looks like he'd like to take the microphone away from Candace. But he doesn't and Candace continues. "I was advised to include a quote in my speech. So, there it is. Twelve years ago I was sitting right there," she points beyond the seniors, "where your families are sitting today. Those were the words for the future that Jim Andrews gave his classmates that day. I was luckier than most of them, though." Candace pauses and searches the crowd. When her gaze falls on Foggy, she smiles. "Three hours later someone I admire a great deal told me something that stuck with me for years and eclipsed the whole of Jim Andrews' speech. They told me: your life is a story."

A few people laugh. Foggy wants to look over his shoulder to see who that was, but doesn't. It's a cliché, they have the right to laugh. He doesn't, because he has the creeping suspicion that he knows where this is going. So he keeps his eyes glued to Candace instead. God, Cande, you dumb jerk, what are you doing? 

"Four years ago we entered this school full of hopes and dreams for the future, we listened to Taylor Swift and have never drunk alcohol. Today we're still high school students, we still have our hopes and dreams, we still listen to Taylor Swift and we still haven't drunk alcohol. But _we_ are not the same. Some of our hopes and dreams we've carried with us for many years, but some of them changed, some of them are new. Tomorrow we'll wake up in the adult world. Tomorrow is the starting day of the rest of our stories. In the last few months, or years, if you have nagging and overprotective older siblings," more laughter, louder this time, "you all have been given a lot of advice. You have heard people outline your futures for you. You have heard all about the mistakes you're making by choosing this college over another, by choosing this career path and not the other. You have been told by well-meaning family members that your hopes don't matter, that your dreams will never come true. That you should do things that are reasonable, not necessarily the ones you want to do."

"You should listen," Candace carries on after a short pause. This time there isn't even a murmur of disagreement — people are simply stunned into silence. Jesus fuck, Candace, being chosen as a speaker is an honour, not an opportunity to shoot yourself in the foot. "You should listen to all that advice. You should listen to all those friends and well-meaning family members, all those people who tell you what is reasonable and what is not. You should listen. You should thank them for all those wise words, and then you should do what _you_ want to do. Politely tell those well-meaning people: I don't care." From the way Cande's voice wavered, Foggy guesses that she wanted to say something less polite and more R-rated. "You only have one story to live. Make sure you own every last second of it. Go out there. Hope. Chase your dreams. Be unreasonable. Don't repeat the mistakes of others, make your own, there's a whole world of them to discover. You are the writer in your life, so shape it and change it and rewrite until you find the story that feels right. It is your responsibility — and your privilege — to ensure that it is a story worth telling."

"So," Candace smiles widely, the bright and happy Candace, "here's to our futures, our stories, which are all going to be legen — wait for it — dary."

There is no reaction. Candace leaves the podium and walks back to her seat before the spell is broken and the first person claps. Soon that solitary clapping turns into applause and Foggy sees blue-clad people in the front rows standing up, giving a thunderous standing ovation. Three chairs down on his right, Bill also stands up, grinning wide. He appears not to be entirely sure what's going on, he probably dozed off somewhere in the middle of that speech. Bill's never been one for a long attention span.

"The speech she worked on with me was not this speech," Matt tells him.

"It's still better than what I expected," Foggy replies.

And then he stands up too, because fuck it, why not, this is his baby sister. Haters gonna hate anyway, so perhaps he should show at least the bare minimum of solidarity.

***

"I'm not a high school student anymore!"

Candace runs to him after the whole ceremony is over, after the headmaster has said his goodbyes, the seniors have got their diplomas, all the awards have been given out. She's springing, happy and excited, her rolled diploma clutched tightly in one hand, her blue cap in the other. She's grinning, she's proud, she high-fived sixteen people on her way here, and twice as many patted her on her back when she passed them by. Candace has achieved one thing Foggy never had: school-wide popularity.

He'd look awful in the cheerleaders' costume, so maybe that wasn't a loss after all.

"Congrats," Foggy says. "You misquoted. Originally it went 'a story fucking worth telling'."

Candace kicks him in the ankle. Not enough to hurt, but enough for him to wince. "Wasn't sure how many 'fucks' I was allowed to include. Besides, is that all you got from my speech?" she asks, incredulous. "Nothing about me dragging your arch-nemesis' name through the mud?"

"Jim Andrews wasn't my arch-nemesis," Foggy tells her patiently, the way he'd explain something to Jared's three-year-old. "He was too dumb for that."

"Doof."

"Jerk."

"So," Matt asks, "what now?"

"We're going home," Candace says, "the plan is that we're having a dinner, a little chat with the visiting family members, and then you're leaving at nine."

Foggy rolls his eyes and he's willing to bet that Matt did as well. "I meant now that you've graduated."

"Columbia," she says. "I got acceptance letters from both Columbia and Princeton, and I chose the former. I thought about Princeton at first, it's a great university. Foggy enjoyed that one semester he spent there, and Debbie's always said those were four most amazing years of her life, but I'd like to get out of home, you know? Plus Columbia's creative writing course is top-notch."

"Weren't you thinking about pathology just three weeks ago?"

Now it's Candace's turn to roll her eyes, "That was a joke, geez, brother, you're slow on the uptake." She shakes her head. "Why do you think I've spent four years working on _The Tower_ on top of everything else?" Candace throws an arm over Foggy's shoulder and leans in, squints as she moves a hand as if mapping out the horizon. "Because 'Candace Nelson, investigative journalist' sounds _amazing_."

"Journalist," Foggy repeats. He glances at Matt and sees him gripping his cane. Uh-oh, he's probably thinking the same thing. Which is unreasonable, because there are a lot of journalists that are fine and famous and some are even wealthy. But Foggy can't stop thinking about the last journalist he's met. The one that ended up dead for his troubles.

"That's one possibility."

That's when the rest of the family sweeps in, enveloping Cande in hugs and peppering her with kisses. Bill fistbumps her, Uncle William hits on the back so hard she almost ends nose-first on the ground. And then Debbie's there too, and she and Cande squeal and holds hands and jump around, happy, like sisters.

Foggy almost spits his lungs out when Uncle William hits _him_ in the back. It's meant as a nice and friendly gesture, but Uncle William is much stronger than he thinks. "We're packing up," he tells Foggy, placing a hand on his shoulder. He squeezes and Foggy grits his teeth. "Godie is sick," try 'hypochondriac', Uncle William, or 'delusional' or 'crazy', or any other fancy word that means she's conning you and does it all for attention, "so we've gotta get going. And Billy's working tomorrow."

"Come on. You could at least stay for dinner," Foggy says. "I'm working tomorrow as well, you know."

"Well," Uncle William laughs, "but you're your own boss. It doesn't count."

Don't say anything mean to him, Foggy, don't say anything mean. He's not trying to be an asshole, it's just Aunt Jagoda's asshole influence on people. Foggy sighs. Whatever, it's a lost battle anyway. If Aunt Jagoda told Uncle William to head straight back home, he will obey. "Elyse said that we'll see each other soon? What was that about?"

"Ah! You don't know yet." Uncle William pushes his chest out and swells with pride. "Billy's getting married?"

That is _not_ the kind of news Foggy was expecting. "He actually found someone desperate enough to marry him?"

"Franklin," Uncle William growls.

Foggy waves a hand. "Sorry, it slipped. Who's the lucky lady?"

"She's a biologist," Uncle William says, "proper degree and all. Funny name, too. Uh, Greta? Gerda? Something like that."

"Good to know you know so much about your future daughter-in-law," Foggy jokes. "When's the wedding?"

"Towards the end of the year. Billy will send an invitation." Uncle William suddenly grins. He raises his hand to pat Foggy on the back again, which Foggy manages to avoid by twisting to his right to look for the rest. Candace is talking with Elyse and Debbie while Matt is standing close to Bess and Brett. The rest of the family is nowhere to be seen, which means they went to get the cars. "For you and your lovely plus one, of course. I'm so glad you got back together with Debbie. We were devastated when we heard you two broke up."

"We broke up five years ago. Why does everyone assume we're back together?"

Uncle William blinks, confused. "Why else would Debbie be here?"

"Candace invited her. They're friends."

"Or maybe that's what she wants you to think, mhm? Maybe she invited Debbie to give you two a push? I think there's potential there. You two could patch things up. It's not like you've been in a proper relationship after Debs."

That--is horribly probable, damn it. Candace is a filthy gossip and she loves meddling in things that are none of her business. It wouldn't be the first time she tried to pull this crap, either. Marci swore up and down that Candace was trying to break them up. Oh, and during his first year of law school, she tried to set him up with the older sister of the then-captain of the cheerleading team. It was beyond awkward, because that was the first time Foggy brought Matt home and Matt's first impression of the Nelsons was Candace chasing Foggy around the house and demanding he goes on a date with that Alice or Ellis or whatever.

No offence, Alice or Ellis or whatever.

Uncle William takes advantage of Foggy's distraction and hits him in the back, causing him to trip. "It was nice seeing you, Franklin. We'll see you at the wedding."

"Yeah. See you."

Uncle William nods at Bill and they — both with their hands in their pockets, backs slightly hunched, like father, like son in a way Foggy and Ned never quite matched each other — walk across the lawn to the parking lot. Foggy watches them go until they disappear behind trees, then joins the rest of his family. His parents are back, with Matt and Brett. Bess and Debbie are gone, though.

"I was wondering what you and Uncle William were talking about," Candace says. She's still in her blue robe, she even put the cap back on.

"Bill's wedding."

Candace and Elyse exchange a knowing look. "So you know. Don't get your hopes up, he's not going to ask you to be his best man."

"I wasn't counting on it," Foggy mutters. "Wouldn't want to be one anyway. Bill's not my friend nor my brother. The only person whose best man I could consider being is Matt. Maybe Brett if he asks me nicely enough."

"Speaking of whom," Elyse throws Matt a glance. "Is he single?"

Foggy squints. "Absolutely not."

"What?" Elyse laughs. "I'm just asking. God, Foggy, possessive much?"

"Not possessive, _protective_. You'd be a match made in hell. Matt's a serial monogamist and you think 'marriage' is just a fancy term for culpable wrongdoing and intolerable harm."

"I could reconsider." Foggy glares at her. "Alright, I wouldn't. But it could be fun."

"No, it wouldn't. For the love of God, Elyse, _stop_."

Elyse raises her hands in surrender. "Fine, alright. But I book him as my backup plus one for Bill's wedding. In case I don't find anyone better."

Good luck finding someone better than Matt. Foggy doesn't voice that thought. "You can't book my friend."

"Sure can, he's pretty much family." And that Foggy can't argue with. "Unless you're calling dibs."

He's not-- _Christ._

Elyse murmurs something about having to go and early planes and getting back home, so Foggy hugs her — then lets Candace hug her — and bids his goodbye. So much for getting home for dinner, he thinks. Uncle William and Bill have already left, Elyse is leaving... Just a few hours and he and Matt will have to get going as well.

"I wanted to say goodbye."

Debbie's smiling shyly and she's tugging at her hair. It's a nervous tick, she does that every time she's uncertain of something. It's like Matt with his tapping and fidgeting.

"Leaving already?" he asks. Pity. He thought he had a little more time with her.

Debbie nods. "Elyse is taking a plane back home, just as I am, so I offered to give her a ride to New York. Since I've rented a car and all."

"It was lovely seeing you," Foggy says. Even Matt would know it's true.

"Likewise." Debbie steps up, leans in and kisses the corner of his mouth. She turns to Candace and smiles, wraps her arms around her. "I'm so proud of you, Cande. You're amazing."

"Thank you," Candace says into Debbie's hair. "I'm glad you came."

Debbie strokes Candace's cheek. "Of course I did. I'll call you the next time I'm on the East Coast, we'll go shopping for your dorm room, like I promised. I'll see you then."

She winks at Candace, and slides her hand down Foggy's arm, and then she's gone, joining Elyse and walking towards the parking lot. She stops briefly by Foggy's parents, and both Ned and Anna hug her tightly. She says her goodbyes to Matt and Brett as well, and then carries on walking. Out of Foggy's life. Again.

"And you broke up with her." Candace shakes her head. " _Bro_."

"We broke up with each other," Foggy corrects her quietly. "Is this why you invited her?"

Candace frowns. "What?"

"Debs." Foggy motions the direction in which Debbie disappeared. "Did you invite her so that we'd see each other? I know you were heartbroken and angry when Debs and I broke up."

"Of course I was," Candace says. "I was _two years old_ when I met her and _fourteen_ when you two broke up. I didn't even remember a time when she wasn't _there_ and suddenly she wasn't. She was like a sister to me. So yes, I was heartbroken and angry. No shit."

"So you've decided to get us back together? Is that why you invited her? Jesus, Candace. Why do you keep meddling in my life? Stop, it's not your business."

Candace's face twists in hurt and anger. "Screw you! I invited her because she's family. And you know what?" She glares at him. "Frankly, if you're going to be like," she motions at Foggy, " _this_ , I don't want her to get back with you. You have issues, Fog. Oh, and also? Contrary to what you believe, not everything ever is about _you_! My entire childhood has been about accommodating you! I invited Debbie, _I_ did, and I did it for myself. Can't something be just about _me_ for once?!"

She turns on her heel and marches away, fuming, the Prussian blue robe billowing behind her. Matt turns his head towards her when she passes him — maybe he hears her angry heartbeat, maybe he hears her murmur curses under her breath — and then turns in Foggy's direction. He raises one shoulder in a half-shrug, a silent _what is it?_ Foggy just shakes his head and hopes that Matt registered that.

This went surprisingly well.

***

Grams ends up taking not only Grandfather Nelson, but also Bess and Brett. They say their goodbyes in front of the main school building — _nice school you had here, Foggy_ — and leave, Grams and her entourage to Hoboken and then New York, Matt, Foggy, Candace and their parents home. It's an awkward ride, with Foggy sitting on the right, Candace on the left, and Matt squeezed between them. Candace has not said a single word to Foggy for over fifteen minutes, and Anna is throwing them worried glances in the rearview mirror.

"What time does your train leave?" Anna asks eventually. A train schedule. Perfect. A defuse topic like the weather. No one is going to throw a fit when talking about the weather, right?

"Twenty-two past nine."

"Dad will drive you to Princeton Junction."

"Thanks."

"It was nice seeing Debbie again," Anna says, sounding hopeful. She glances at her children in the rearview mirror and her face falls. Next to Foggy, Matt shakes his head. Nope, Mum. Wrong topic.

Candace shoots out of the car barely a second after Dad's put the brakes on. She has Dad's keys in her hand and she opens the front door, is inside the house by the time Foggy and Matt get out, and Foggy can hear her run up the stairs and slam her bedroom door behind her.

"What happened?" Matt asks once inside.

They end up in the kitchen, and Foggy is standing with his back towards Matt, with his hands leaning on the kitchen counter and his head bowed. He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, then turns to face Matt. "Just a family misunderstanding."

Matt's brows rise. "That's not what a family misunderstanding looks like."

"And you would know?" Foggy snaps at him before he realises what he's saying. Perfect. Just--perfect. Foggy can see Matt's Adam's apple bob when he swallows whatever retort he came up with. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that."

Matt cocks his head — listening — and nods. "I know."

"Did you just polygraph me?"

"I might have?"

" _Dude._ "

Matt half-smiles. "I think I remember you saying something about me not having to just 'take your bullshit'...?"

When did he... Oh. Right. _Then._ Which makes it all Karen's fault. As per usual. "Miranda warning, Matt. I wasn't read my rights."

"Anything you say or do can and _will_ be used against you," Matt says immediately, because. Well. Asshole. Worst best friend ever. Foggy should demand a refund. "You should go. Apologise to your sister. Unless you did mean whatever you told her."

He's also right. Sometimes. Usually. Most of the time. Damn it. "I didn't tell her anything," Foggy defends himself, and Matt cocks his head as if saying _yeah, right_. "However. It'd be awkward if I left on not-speaking terms with her, she's supposed to come stay with me at the end of July."

Matt splays his hands in a 'there you go' manner. Foggy takes a deep breath and lets go of the countertop, pushes himself away. He opens the fridge and takes out the cocktail that was supposed to be served for dessert, but won't, because _some people_ have decided that they have more important things to do and bailed.

On his way out of the kitchen he grabs two glasses; in the hallway he passes his parents, engrossed in a hushed conversation that stops the moment they notice him. "No, don't stop conspiring on my account."

"We were just," Ned begins, because he's the nicest and also the best man Foggy's ever met and he is the kind of person who tries to explain everything to everyone, hoping that it'll make them realise that he's not doing anything mean, and especially not on purpose.

Mum hits him in the chest and Dad shuts up.

Foggy skips steps on his way upstairs. He stops by the door to Candace's room and kicks it, he should really stop doing that, or devise a better way of handling bottles and glasses. "Cande? May I come in?"

He gets no answer, so he presses the door handle with his elbow — it requires him to do some creative bending — and pushes it open. Candace is sitting on her bed, staring out of the window, and doesn't look away when he enters.

"Hey," he says. "I've brought that lemon and lime cocktail that you and dad slaved on." No response. "The parent units haven't decided what to do in lieu of that dinner that's not going to happen."

"I'm not hungry."

He puts the bottle and the glasses down on Candace's desk and crosses the room to sit on the edge of her bed. "I was a dick."

"Yeah. You were."

"I do apologise. Stress, you know. Causes all the amassed dickery to leak out."

At least he gets her to look at him. She does it the way she'd look at a particularly annoying fly, or Jared's daughter Nyssa. "You were stressed? _You_?" Foggy shrugs. "This was supposed to be my day. _I_ had the right to be stressed. The whole family was supposed to come to see me. I was a speaker. I was finally graduating the hell hole that is high school."

"Ey, Bullshit Police alert. You _loved_ high school."

"Four best years of my life," Candace admits. "Mostly because you've been gone from Princeton for years, and no one at the school even remembered you. So, no questions like," Candace pitches her voice lower , and uncomfortably reminds Foggy of Raza, "'oooh, are you related to Franklin Nelson, perchance?'."

"And who's being a dick now?"

"I don't think I have the necessary equipment for that."

Foggy grabs a pillow off her bed and throws it at her. "Oh, you're hilarious. By the way, your speech sucked. I do appreciate dragging Jim Andrews' name through the mud, gotta love the freedom of information. However, you misquoted. And you misquoted _me_ of all people. Shame on you, Candace."

She throws the pillow back. "Sue me."

"I'm saving up for someone special, so I can't afford to sue you." Candace sticks out her tongue. "I could fight you, though. I'd probably win."

"No chance. I do sick backflips." That she does. "You really liked it?"

Foggy nods. "I'm deeply honoured that you've decided that out of all wise words you've ever heard in your life, mine were the wisest."

"They weren't." Candace takes a breath. "Well, Matt said to find someone who inspires me, and when I sat down to make a list, the only name I came up with was yours. So I had to choose you. For the lack of any competition."

"Still honoured, and slightly concerned about the state of your education. Four years of the best public high school in the country and you can't name a single inspiring person?"

"My SAT results are still better than yours."

"And you're taking them to Columbia." Foggy makes himself comfortable on Candace's bed, moves to a cross-legged position right in front of her. He puts elbows on his thighs and props his chin on folded hands. "Aren't you worried that you're signing up for four years of people asking whether or not we're related?"

"That is the reason why I thought about Princeton at first," Candace admits. She moves so that she sits in a position that mirrors his. "But then I thought that going to the same school as you is like a test of my abilities. It's a challenge. I'll enter the school as your little sister and exit it as someone so much better than you."

"It's good to know you have healthy ambitions."

"Besides," Candace continues, "my brother proved to be kind of amazing. Now, if anyone asks, I can say that yes, I'm the sister of the guy who locked Wilson Fisk in jail, booyah!" Candace pumps her fist. At Foggy's quirked eyebrow she adds, "What. I read."

"I know that. I just wasn't aware your reading material included the news."

Candace rolls her eyes. Then she drops her gaze and stares at her duvet, unfolds her hands and starts picking at a loose thread. "So," she asks, "wanna tell me what had you on edge this whole time?"

"Not particularly."

"Debbie." It's not even a question.

"It's been weird to see her, after all those years."

"Good weird or bad weird?"

Foggy ponders that for a moment. "Bad weird," he decides. "Debs is a fond memory, but also a walking reminder of the part of my life that I'm more than glad is over. Not to mention, her being here could have led to conversations I hope I'll never have to have." Candace lifts her head and looks at him in confusion. Foggy sighs. "I might have never told Matt. About--you know what."

Comprehension dawns on Cande's face. "So you were stressing out about the possibility that Matt and Debbie would start talking, Debbie would say something and Matt would realise that you've been lying to him. Okay. That's--totally in character for you, actually."

"I'm not lying to Matt," Foggy bristles. "I just never told him. It's not something I advertise, and he never asked."

"An omission."

"And that's not lying," Foggy points out. "That's being truthful, just selectively. I never _actively_ lied to him, about anything. And I would tell him, if it was ever relevant. It's just not. So this is a white lie at best."

Candace clicks her tongue. "Right," she says. "I forgot, you're a lawyer." She smiles sweetly and pats his knee. "But no worries, we're back to the status quo. Debbie left, Matt still knows less than Jon Snow, and you need to appease your baby sister."

"I apologised."

Her sweet smile turns so sweet and so fake that it appears deadly. Whatever she has in mind — and Foggy's not fooling himself, she has something — he won't like it. He rarely does. Candace's ideas, when dumb, are as dumb as Matt's dumbest ideas. Which would explain why those two got on like a house on fire the moment they met. "And now you have to make it up to me."

Mum chooses that moment to stick her head inside the room. "I had an idea," Anna announces. Oh, great. More ideas. "We should celebrate, Candace-style."

Candace leans forward. "I'm listening."

"I asked Matt what he thought of it," Candace and Foggy exchange knowing looks, of course Mum asked Matt first, he was her favourite child, she loved him most, when she met him the sun was shining and the angels were singing and the gates of Heaven opened, while Foggy and Cande she got half-priced at Walmart, "and he agreed that it's a great idea."

"That doesn't fill me with confidence, mum," Foggy says.

"We've ordered your favourite pizza," Anna says. A genuine smile breaks out on Candace's face. "Dad's downstairs making cookie dough. We have popcorn, we have jaffa cakes. No stuck-up dinners with dad's family. We'll all go to the living room and play board games, or Taboo, or some other shit. A proper celebration."

"Sold," Candace says immediately. "On one condition. We can play Taboo, but later. First I want us to watch the Japantrip videos."

Foggy freezes. "No. Candace, _no_."

Candace grins. "Candace _yes_."

***

"The Japantrip videolog," Candace tells Matt twenty minutes later, "is a series of impossibly dumb videos my brother dear made for me while abroad. See, after he ditched Princeton, he decided to go on this trip to 'discover himself'," oh _God_ , she's making air quotes, "'find his place in the circle of life' and other dumb motivational shit like that."

"You left Princeton to travel around the world?" Matt asks. Foggy doesn't see the face he makes because he hides his own burning one in his hands, but he can hear the amusement in Matt's voice.

"No," Foggy says. It's muffled by his hands. "That was incidental."

"He blew a significant portion of his blood money on that trip," Candace supplies, ever helpful. Best sister ever she is not. "Good thing he got the scholarship, without it there might have been no Columbia. My scholarship's better, though. All that cheerleading paid off."

Please don't pick up on the wrong thing, please don't pick up on the wrong thing... "Blood money?" Matt asks. The universe does hate Foggy, why is he still surprised by this crap.

"Nevermind," he tells Matt through his fingers.

"That's what they call my father's money," Anna says, sour and resentful. At least her reaction is appropriate, even if the content of what she's saying is less than welcome. "It's not entirely inappropriate, I'm sure he got it for killing children or shooting puppies. You've met him briefly at my mother's birthday party, actually. He's an asshole."

"Annie," Ned says tiredly. It's an old argument. Older than Foggy. They've been having it for years. It's the one argument Dad will never win.

"I don't care how much money he threw at us," Anna hisses, "he's still not welcome in my house and in our lives."

"Which is why we've always been allowed to spend it on whatever we wanted," Candace wraps it up. "For example, I wanted a treehouse for my tenth birthday while Foggy got that ridiculous camcoder when he went to college."

"Candace also wanted a diving course, and the whole set of diving equipment" Foggy adds. 

"Well _Foggy_ wanted new gear for _his_ hobby more often than he needed it."

"I also used it to pay the office bills for the first two months, shit, I wasn't supposed to tell you that."

"And it paid for his move to Osaka."

Foggy drops his hands. "You know, I didn't spend as much as you think. Just the tickets to Osaka, and rent for the first month. But that was before I met Sayu and got a job."

"Everything is horrendously expensive in Japan, or so Debbie told us, therefore I won't believe in the low-budget story." Candace clears her throat. "Anyway. I was eight at the time and I thought I'd miss this doof terribly, so I told him to make videos for me. Which he did, and they're _hilarious_."

Matt chuckles. "You remember that I can't see, right?"

"There are three people willing to describe that disaster to you. Plus, dashing asshole young adult Foggy's voiceover is priceless in itself."

"Kill me now," Foggy begs as Candace puts on the video.

***

" _Damn_ ," Candace hisses. "Da-aad!"

It doesn't work. The goddamn video won't play, praise be, bless this glitchy machine, Foggy's reputation and good opinion might yet be saved.

"I guess it's a raincheck on the videos?" Matt asks, sounding honestly disappointed.

Foggy needs to remember that Matt is never allowed in this house ever again. Or anywhere near Candace. "For all of eternity, I hope."

Candace throws a remote onto the sofa. "This sucks." She looks dejected. "The evening is officially ruined. Even pizza won't help."

"Did I hear right?" Dad peeks in from the hallway. "My baby girl is unhappy? Something about even pizza not being the cure?"

"Pizza's not the universal cure for sadness, dad." Candace points to the TV. "I was going to humiliate Foggy by sharing the dumb Japan videos, but they won't work. Ergo, this evening is a bust."

"How about pizza, cookie dough and _Cards Against Humanity_?" Ned asks. "We just got the fifth expansion pack, we could all sit down and have fun, like a normal family."

"I'm not sure what's more worrisome, the fact that you think _Cards_ is how normal families have fun or the implication that we're not," Foggy feels obliged to comment.

"The possibility of us being normal is offensive to me," Candace points out.

Ned only shrugs. "'Normal' went out the window the moment I first saw my wife chase someone with a shotgun. The craziness has only been progressing ever since."

"I'll bring the set," Foggy sighs.

***

The Nelsons love their board games. It's a fact of life. Foggy's dad might be the only one of his siblings to enjoy sitting down and playing for hours, but he managed to instill that love for tabletop gaming in both of his kids. And then, one Christmas break, thanks to his son's insistence and power of persuasion and ability to politely threaten people, he got to do the same to a cute wounded duckling.

The deal with games was the same as with books, only slower. First was _Monopoly_ , a game that both Foggy and Candace hated but was the first Braille board game that Anna and Ned came across. Then, _Scrabble_. Matt's birthday present during their third year of law school was a whole set of _Taboo_ cards, in Braille, just for him. There might have been some tears.

Mostly they were Foggy's, who shed them after his mother kicked him in the shin and threatened with unspeakable evils if he as much as breathed a word to Matt that the card set was something Ned Nelson has spent three months making himself.

Then there was nothing and suddenly a gaming boom, with _Cards_ making an entrance to the Nelson household, and boxes upon boxes of games given to Foggy for odd reasons. All of the games accessible and with Braille overlay to the boards and cards. Everything to help Ned with his long-time goal of turning his third kid into as much of a gamer as the other two.

"Alright," Matt says, feeling his black card. "Uh, 'Having the worst day ever, hashtag blank space'."

"Oooh, I like this one," Candace says.

"At least your cards don't suck," Anna murmurs, putting a white card on the table.

When four cards land on the table Foggy gathers them up and passes them to Matt, who feels the answers and snickers. "Sharing is caring, you know?"

"'Having the worst day ever'," Matt reads out the question again, "'hashtag an icepick lobotomy'." He puts the card down. "'Hashtag half-assed foreplay'. 'Hashtag Nickelback'. 'Hashtag the Pope', seriously?"

He glares at Foggy. Alright, more like attempts to glare at the spot to his left where he estimates Foggy is. It works, sort of, but only because he took his glasses off earlier and forgot to put them back on.

"That one isn't mine!"

Anna clears her throat. "I take full responsibility for that one."

"Nickelback wins, obviously." Ned clenches his fist, hisses out a 'yesss' and scoops the black card.

"Not fair," Candace complains, "I wasted my perfectly good half-assed foreplay for this. Why Nickelback?"

"Because I have ears, Cande."

Ned takes the next black card. "'Coming to Broadway this season, blank space the Musical." He looks over to Foggy. "This one's for you."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm the theatre kid."

This time it's Anna who stalls the round, insisting that she has such shit cards that she needs more time to decide which one is the least shitty. "And the votes are in!" Ned gathers the cards. "The newest Broadway hit is Alcoholism the Musical." He puts the card down. "'Heteronormativity the Musical'. 'Soup that is too hot the Musical'," his voice crack on 'hot' and he barely reins in the giggle, which tells Foggy all that he needs to know about who the winner is, "and 'Vigilante Justice the Musical'." He winces as he reads the last one. "Annie..."

"What?" Anna asks. "You're acting as if you didn't like my sense of humour."

"Normally I'd appreciate, but this is cutting too close, with all that's happening back in New York, with the Avengers and that Daredevil guy..."

"Precisely." Anna points a finger at Ned. "People in dumb costumes are a prime material for a Broadway show."

"Not this time. This time the new Broadway hit is about a soup that was too hot. Whose card was it?"

Matt, whose back straightened the moment Daredevil was name-dropped but who also looked like he desperately wanted to disappear, raises a hand.

"This is bullshit," Candace decides.

***

Candace cancels their game of _Cards_ after fifty minutes of Matt and Dad all but swapping cards. Foggy manages to land one hit, but that hardly counts as the 'blood of Christ' card is foolproof and always wins.

Candace insists they swap to _Taboo_.

"Won't work, there's an odd number of players," Foggy points out.

"Oh, I'm not playing," she tells him. "I'll be the judge. It's you and Matt versus mum and dad."

"Hardly fair, mum and dad are a married couple and they know each other inside out."

"So you better step up your game, brother mine."

Foggy squints. "What nefarious plan has your twisted mind concocted now?"

Candace just smiles sweetly and offers Foggy the first card.

Main word: choir. Other taboo words: sing, carols, conductor, music, Christmas. Alright, he can do it. "Okay, Matt, it's this thing that you were banned from at the orphanage."

"Playground?"

Foggy clicks his tongue, impatient. Shit, time's ticking. "No, the other thing. Some people didn't participate fully, just mouthed along, but you always laugh that the nuns banned you from it entirely."

"Choir!"

Foggy picks the next card. Main word: Ariel. Taboo words: little, mermaid, Disney, sea, red. Fine then, not the Disney angle. "Remember that dude that lived across the hall from us in our first year? The one who kept tripping the fire alarm with his hairspray?" Matt nods. "What was his boyfriend's name?"

"Uh, Steven?"

"Yeah, and the other one's?"

Matt chews on his lip for a moment and Foggy barely keeps himself from snapping at him impatiently. "Ariel, Ariel Sharman."

"Yesss." Next card. Apple, taboo word being iPod/iPhone, fruit, orange, red, computer. "Second year, the Evidence class, there was that one guy that wouldn't leave Marci alone. What did she throw at him across the lecture hall?"

"Apple."

Knife, taboo words: sharp, blood, cut, scratch, cut. "You have it in your kitchen, I used to worry you'd chop your finger off with it."

"Knife."

"Ding-ding, time's up," Candace says. "That's four points, congrats."

"How is 'kitchen' not a taboo word for 'knife'?" Anna asks, clearly displeased. "Not fair."

Foggy grins. "You're just worried you're not going to be as good as Matt and I."

***

Mum and Dad end up beating them by one point, one lousy point, lost just because Foggy's had trouble describing 'fluorescent' to someone who has never seen Gary Feinstein's trousers at the end-of-first-year party that Marci threw.

"Well played," Foggy congratulates his parents, who are way happier about this win than respectable people their age ought to be. "Well played."

"Well played yourself." Candace bumps him with an elbow. "You and Matt are so married."

Foggy rolls his eyes. "Sister, we had a deal. You never use the m-word around me."

Candace is about to reply, but stops when Dad points at his watch. "Kids," he addresses Foggy and Matt, "you should go and get your stuff downstairs. We'll have to get going in the next ten to fifteen minutes if you want to make it to the Junction in time to catch the 9:22 train."

And that pretty much concludes the three-day-long holiday in Princeton.

***

"Thank you for taking me."

Foggy glances at Matt. He's been sitting with his eyes closed for the past fifteen minutes, and Foggy thought that the rhythmic sound of the train's wheels skipping on the chinks in the tracks lulled him to sleep.

Apparently not.

"You keep saying that every time we visit my parents," Foggy points out, "and I keep telling you that I wouldn't be welcome without you. They want you there, on your own merit. My mother likes you more than she likes me. I'm expendable and you're--you."

Matt smiles wryly. "I like your family."

"Glad to hear that." Foggy turns in his seat so that he's facing Matt. It doesn't matter to Matt all that much, but it does make it easier to observe him. "And they're your family too. Which is another thing I keep telling you. And I'll keep telling you this for as long as it takes you to believe that."

"It's cute that you think that," Matt mumbles. He doesn't sound awake anymore. He's verging that place between sleep and consciousness where you still have the capacity to talk, but can't effectively control what you're saying. "For now. I like Debbie."

And he's lost. "What has Debbie to do with anything?"

"You'll find a Debbie. Leave. She'll be family, not me. It's alright. People always leave."

"People don't always leave," Foggy says. He feels like they've had that conversation before. Aw, fuck, yes, they did have this conversation before. Damn it. "Not always. Not _forever_."

"You came back." Matt sighs softly and leans towards Foggy, as if seeking warmth. His head lolls to the side and falls onto Foggy's shoulder. "Why d'you come back?"

It's been two months since Matt asked him this question for the first time and Foggy is no closer to finding a good answer, so he stays silent. He presses a kiss to the top of Matt's head and lets him doze off on his arm.

He regrets having to wake him up once the train pulls up to the Penn Station. Matt so rarely looks peaceful and relaxed; when Foggy thinks about it, he realises that even in law school, before all the shit went down, Matt's always been on edge. Skittish. Sometimes, though not often, thankfully, even in his sleep. He had nightmares that Foggy didn't know what to do about, so he just politely pretended he didn't know about them.

He shakes Matt's shoulder. "Matt? Matty, wake up."

Matt murmurs something and burrows his head further into Foggy's shoulder. Foggy sighs. This won't do. "Matt," he tries again, louder. "Matt, we're home. We need to get off the train. I'll get us a cab, you'll get to your fancy bed and your fancy silk sheets in twenty minutes tops."

"New York?" Matt asks.

"Yup."

Matt stretches in his seat and yawns. He lets Foggy out of his, and Foggy gets their bags down, grabs them both and leads Matt out of the train and to the platform. It's night already, but it's not _late_ , and it wouldn't have mattered anyway, not in New York. The city that never sleeps was a very apt name for it. Foggy could attest to that, especially with Marc from upstairs _still_ not being done. There is no way he was renovating. Considering how long it's been taking, his renovation would have to include taking down all the walls and putting them up in different places. Nothing else would have taken this much time.

"450 W 58th Street first, then 485 W 46th," Foggy tells the driver after he and Matt get into a taxi.

"46th is closer," the cabbie points out. "You sure you don't want me to go there first?"

"58th," Foggy repeats, and glances at Matt, who's still mostly asleep, oh yeah, good call, "and 46th after that."

"Your money," the cabbie says.

"Precisely."

It takes them less than fifteen minutes to get to Matt's apartment building. Foggy asks the driver to wait and he gets Matt out of the car, almost forgets about Matt's bag. Handling a mostly asleep Matt is worse than handling a drunk Matt, he decides; drunk Matt at least tries to cooperate with you, while mostly asleep Matt is like a ragdoll.

"Almost home."

Matt yawns so wide Foggy's surprised his jaw doesn't pop out of its joint. When Foggy was a kid, his Nana Nelson used to say that he wanted to swallow people whole, when he yawned wide. That would be an effective tactic against bad guys, just swallowing them, Cronus-style. The thought makes him giggle. 

"You can stay the night," Matt offers quietly once they manage to get inside his apartment without waking Fran up.

Foggy's tempted for about five seconds. "I appreciate the offer," he says, "but I'd love to go home and sleep in my own bed."

Matt snorts and topples onto his bed. He doesn't even bother with undressing or taking his shoes off. It reminds Foggy of law school, he used to find Matt sleeping fully clothed a lot of times. "You slept in your own bed at your parents' house."

"That was teen Foggy's bed, and teen Foggy had a strange idea of what was comfortable."

Which was absolutely true. His back is killing him and his neck would never thank him for putting it through the hell that was his bedding in Princeton. Note to self: invest in nice pillows and a new mattress before your next visit home, Nelson, if you put any value in your spine and its continued well-being.

"I'll see you tomorrow at the office, then?" Matt asks. Foggy can barely see, let alone understand, him, with his face pressed to a pillow. 

"No, you won't." Matt raises his head, slightly confused. With his hair tousled and pouting he reminds Foggy of a puppy. A very sad puppy, of the kind that sometimes ended up as the face of 'adopt a stray' campaigns that animal shelters organised from time to time. Adopt a stray. Heh. "I can't believe I have to remind you, but you can't see, buddy."

"Because I'm blind."

Foggy nods. "Because you're blind."

Matt drops his head back onto the pillow. "That was terrible. I'm proud of you."

"Are you kidding, I'm proud of myself. Do you know how difficult it is to come up with new blind jokes after five years?"

Matt chuckles into the pillow. "Goodnight, Foggy."

"Night, Matt."

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As mentioned last time, I changed the weather at the graduation and invented the speakers. Sorry, this is MCU and therefore an AU of Real World.
> 
> [64 oz. games](http://www.64ouncegames.com/) produces brilliant accessibility kits for various board and card games, check them out if you can.
> 
> Criminal sentences are public knowledge, so there's nothing wrong with mentioning that in a graduation speech. It's not exactly tactful, but hey, what can you do.
> 
> Elyse tells Foggy that 'a donkey knows more than you', which idiomatically means - as I've been told - that you're kind of an idiot.
> 
> Bill Nelson's fiancee is of course Greer Grant, whom I promise you'll meet eventually. There is the matter of that wedding that Foggy will attend and who his plus one will be.
> 
> Debbie is going to appear again, which I'm excited for because she's lovely and someone who knows a whole different side of Foggy, and is also someone Foggy loves very much.


End file.
